A biography for Georgia O'Keeffehasn’t been written yet.
“I don't very much enjoy looking at paintings in general. I know too much about them. I take them apart.”
“It was all so far away - there was quiet and an untouched feel to the country and I could work as I pleased.”
“I have things in my head that are not like what anyone has taught me - shapes and ideas so near to me - so natural to my way of being and thinking that it hasn't occurred to me to put them down.”
“I have already settled it for myself so flattery and criticism go down the same drain and I am quite free.”
“You get whatever accomplishment you are willing to declare.”
“I know now that most people are so closely concerned with themselves that they are not aware of their own individuality, I can see myself, and it has helped me to say what I want to say in paint.”
“I often lay on that bench looking up into the tree, past the trunk and up into the branches. It was particularly fine at night with the stars above the tree.”
“I had to create an equivalent for what I felt about what I was looking at - not copy it.”
“I decided to start anew, to strip away what I had been taught.”
“I feel there is something unexplored about woman that only a woman can explore.”
“I believe I would rather have Stieglitz like something - anything I had done - than anyone else I know.”
“The unexplainable thing in nature that makes me feel the world is big fat beyond my understanding – to understand maybe by trying to put it into form. To find the feeling of infinity on the horizon line or just over the next hill.”
“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.”
“One can't paint New York as it is, but rather as it is felt.”
“I hate flowers - I paint them because they're cheaper than models and they don't move.”
“I found I could say things with color and shapes that I couldn't say any other way - things I had no words for.”
“Someone else's vision will never be as good as your own vision of your self. 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.”
“I have been absolutely terrified every moment of my life and I have never let it keep me from doing a single thing I wanted to do.”
“Marks on paper are free - free speech - press - pictures all go together I suppose.”
“Singing has always seemed to me the most perfect means of expression. It is so spontaneous. And after singing, I think the violin. Since I cannot sing, I paint.”