Georgia O’Keeffe Quotes About New Mexico, Life, Art

Georgia Totto O’Keeffe was an American artist. She was known for her paintings of enlarged flowers, New York skyscrapers, and New Mexico landscapes. O’Keeffe has been recognized as the “Mother of American modernism”. These Georgia O’Keeffe quotes will motivate you to achieve success.

Best Georgia O’Keeffe Quotes

1. “I found I could say things with color and shapes that I couldn’t say any other way – things I had no words for.” ~ Georgia O’Keeffe
2. “Filling a space in a beautiful way – that is what art means to me.” ~ Georgia O’Keeffe , Georgia O’Keeffe quotes on art
3. “I’ve been absolutely terrified every moment of my life – and I’ve never let it keep me from doing a single thing I wanted to do.” ~ Georgia O’Keeffe
4. “Whether you succeed or not is irrelevant, there is no such thing. Making your unknown known is the important thing.” ~ Georgia O’Keeffe
5. “I think it’s so foolish for people to want to be happy. Happy is so momentary–you’re happy for an instant and then you start thinking again. Interest is the most important thing in life; happiness is temporary, but interest is continuous.” ~ Georgia O’Keeffe
6. “When you take a flower in your hand and really look at it, it’s your world for the moment. I want to give that world to someone else. Most people in the city rush around so, they have no time to look at a flower. I want them to see it whether they want to or not.” ~ Georgia O’Keeffe

7. “The men liked to put me down as the best woman painter. I think I’m one of the best painters.” ~ Georgia O’Keeffe

8. “Nobody sees a flower really; it is so small. We haven’t time, and to see takes time – like to have a friend takes time.” ~ Georgia O’Keeffe
9. “I decided that if I could paint that flower in a huge scale, you could not ignore its beauty.” ~ Georgia O’Keeffe
10. “If you take a flower in your hand and really look at it, it’s your world for a moment.” ~ Georgia O’Keeffe
11. “Someone else’s vision will never be as good as your own vision of yourself. Live and die with it ’cause in the end, it’s all you have. Lose it and you lose yourself and everything else. I should have listened to myself.” ~ Georgia O’Keeffe
12. “Interest is the most important thing in life; happiness is temporary, but interest is continuous.” ~ Georgia O’Keeffe

13. “Fill a space in a beautiful way.” ~ Georgia O’Keeffe

14. “To create one’s world in any of the arts takes courage.” ~ Georgia O’Keeffe
15. “I decided to start anew-to strip away what I had been taught, to accept as true my own thinking. This was one of the best times of my life. There was no one around to look at what I was doing, no one interested, no one to say anything about it one way or another. I was alone and singularly free, working into my own, unknown-no one to satisfy but myself. I began with charcoal and paper and decided not to use any color until it was impossible to do what I wanted to do in black and white. I believe it was June before I needed blue.” ~ Georgia O’Keeffe
16. “It’s not enough to be nice in life. You’ve got to have nerve.” ~ Georgia O’Keeffe Quotes
17. “I have already settled it for myself so flattery and criticism go down the same drain and I am quite free.” ~ Georgia O’Keeffe
18. “God told me if I painted that mountain enough, I could have it.” ~ Georgia O’Keeffe
19. “Nothing is less real than realism. Details are confusing. It is only by selection, by elimination, by emphasis, that we get at the real meaning of things.” ~ Georgia O’Keeffe

20. “Imagination makes you see all sorts of things.” ~ Georgia O’Keeffe

21. “Where I was born and where and how I have lived is unimportant. It is what I have done with where I have been that should be of interest.” ~ Georgia O’Keeffe
22. “A week ago it was the mountains I thought the most wonderful, and today it’s the plains. I guess it’s the feeling of bigness in both that carries me away.” ~ Georgia O’Keeffe
23. “I feel there is something unexplored about woman that only a woman can explore.” ~ Georgia O’Keeffe
24. “Happiness goes like the wind, but what is interesting stays.” ~ Georgia O’Keeffe

25. “I want real things … music that makes holes in the sky.” ~ Georgia O’Keeffe

26. “So I said to myself-I’ll paint what I see-what the flower is to me but I’ll paint it big and they will be surprised into taking the time to look at it-I will make even busy New Yorkers take time to see what I see of flowers.” ~ Georgia O’Keeffe
27. “When people read erotic symbols into my painting, they’re really thinking about their own affairs.” ~ Georgia O’Keeffe
28. “I don’t see why we ever think of what others think of what we do – no matter who they are. Isn’t it enough just to express yourself?” ~ Georgia O’Keeffe
29. “I’ve been afraid every single day of my life, but I’ve gone ahead and done it anyway.” ~ Georgia O’Keeffe
30. “To make your unknown known – that’s the important thing.” ~ Georgia O’Keeffe
31. “I decided to accept as true my own thinking.” ~ Georgia O’Keeffe

32. “You are one of my nicest thoughts.” ~ Georgia O’Keeffe

33. “Since I cannot sing, I paint.” ~ Georgia O’Keeffe
34. “The days you work are the best days.” ~ Georgia O’Keeffe
35. “Artists and religionists are never far apart, they go to the sources of revelation for what they choose to experience and what they report is the degree of their experiences. Intellect
    wishes to arrange — intuition wishes to accept.” ~ Georgia O’Keeffe
36. “Sun-bleached bones were most wonderful against the blue – that blue that will always be there as it is now after all man’s destruction is finished.” ~ Georgia O’Keeffe

37. “My painting is what I have to give back to the world for what the world gives to me.” ~ Georgia O’Keeffe

38. “Dearest – my body is simply crazy with wanting you – If you don’t come tomorrow – I don’t see how I can wait for you – I wonder if your body wants mine the way mine wants yours – the kisses – the hotness – the wetness – all melting together – the being held so tight that it hurts – the strangle and the struggle.” ~ Georgia O’Keeffe
39. “When I think of death, I only regret that I will not be able to see this beautiful country anymore unless the Indians are right and my spirit will walk here after I’m gone.” ~ Georgia O’Keeffe
40. “Making your unknown known is the important thing – and keeping the unknown always beyond you – catching – crystalizing your simpler clearer vision of life – only to see it turn stale compared to what you vaguely feel ahead – that you must always keep working to grasp.” ~ Georgia O’Keeffe
41. “The painting is like a thread that runs through all the reasons for all the other things that make one’s life.” ~ Georgia O’Keeffe

42. “I’m frightened all the time. But I never let it stop me. Never!” ~ Georgia O’Keeffe

43. “Before I put brush to canvas, I question, ‘Is this mine? …Is it influenced by some idea which I have acquired from some man? …I am trying with all my skill to do a painting that is all of women, as well as all of me.” ~ Georgia O’Keeffe
44. “In the evening I go up in the desert and spend hours watching the sun go down, just enjoying it, and every day I go out and watch it again. I draw some and there is a little painting and so the days go by.” ~ Georgia O’Keeffe
45. “It always seems to me that so few people live – they just seem to exist and I don’t see any reason why we shouldn’t live always – til we die physically.” ~ Georgia O’Keeffe Quotes
46. “The simple fact of yourself… there it is… just you… no excitement about it… a very simple fact… the only thing you have… keep it as clear as you can.” ~ Georgia O’Keeffe
47. “I can’t live where I want to, I can’t go where I want to go, I can’t do what I want to, I can’t even say what I want to. I decided I was a very stupid fool not to at least paint as I wanted to.” ~ Georgia O’Keeffe
48. “The meaning of a word – to me – is not as exact as the meaning of a color. Colors and shapes make a more definite statement than words.” ~ Georgia O’Keeffe

49. “You get whatever accomplishment you are willing to declare.” ~ Georgia O’Keeffe

50. “A flower is relatively small… Still in a way-nobody sees a flower-so I said to myself-I’ll paint it big.” ~ Georgia O’Keeffe
51. “I long ago came to the conclusion that even if I could put down accurately the thing I saw and enjoyed, it would not give the observer the kind of feeling it gave me. I had to create an equivalent for what I felt about what I was looking at-not copy it.” ~ Georgia O’Keeffe
52. “My first memory is of the brightness of light — light all around.” ~ Georgia O’Keeffe
53. “I often painted fragments of things because it seemed to make my statement as well as or better than the whole could.” ~ Georgia O’Keeffe
54. “That nervous energy that makes people like you and I want and go after everything in the world – bump our heads on all the hard walls and scratch our hands on all the briars – but it makes living great – doesn’t it – I’m glad I want everything in the world – good and bad – bitter and sweet – I want it all and a lot of it too” ~ Georgia O’Keeffe
55. “I get out my work and have a show for myself before I have it publicly. I make up my own mind about it-how good or bad or indifferent it is. After that, the critics can write what they please. I have already settled it for myself so flattery and criticism go down the same drain and I am quite free.” ~ Georgia O’Keeffe

56. “A flower touches everyone’s heart.” ~ Georgia O’Keeffe

57. “One works because I suppose it is the most interesting thing one knows to do. The days one works are the best days. On the other days, one is hurrying through the other things one imagines one has to do to keep one’s life going.” ~ Georgia O’Keeffe
58. “I like an empty wall because I can imagine what I like on it.” ~ Georgia O’Keeffe
59. “Color is one of the great things in the world that makes life worth living to me and as I have come to think of painting it is my efforts to create an equivalent with paint color for the world, life as I see it.” ~ Georgia O’Keeffe
60. “It seems to me very important to the idea of democracy to the country and to the world eventually that all men and women stand equal under the sky.” ~ Georgia O’Keeffe

61. “I wish people were all trees and I think I could enjoy them then.” ~ Georgia O’Keeffe

62. “My center does not come from my mind – it feels in me like a plot of warm moist well-tilled earth with the sun shining hot on it… It seems I would rather feel starkly empty than let anything be planted that cannot be tended to the fullest possibility of its growth.” ~ Georgia O’Keeffe
63. “I look at my work and make up my mind about it. After that, neither flattery nor criticism matters to me.” ~ Georgia O’Keeffe
64. “The morning is the best time, there are no people around. My pleasant disposition likes the world with nobody in it.” ~ Georgia O’Keeffe
65. “I hate flowers – I paint them because they’re cheaper than models and they don’t move.” ~ Georgia O’Keeffe

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