Last Updated on 22 June 2024

Quotes from Georgia O’Keeffe (1887-1986)

• The days you work are the best days.
• 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 found I could say things with color and shapes that I couldn’t say any other way – things I had no words for.
• I had to create an equivalent for what I felt about what I was looking at – not copy it.
• I hate flowers – I paint them because they’re cheaper than models and they don’t move.
• 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’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.
• My painting is what I have to give back to the world for what the world gives to me.
• 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.
• One can’t paint New York as it is, but rather as it is felt.
• 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.
• What I see outside my bedroom window in winter is really wonderful… I like my life.
• You get whatever accomplishment you are willing to declare.