Georgia O'Keeffe

 

By the early 1920s, when O’Keeffe turned her attention to representational painting, she had used flowers as subject matter for almost two decades and had been exposed to advanced photographic techniques for at least half a decade. It is not surprising that what she did with flowers in the 1920s and thereafter was largely the result of combining the principles she learned from photography with those of the composition-based thinking of Arthur Wesley Dow that she had first learned about in the 1910s and would subsequently explore through course work with Dow at Teachers College. His modernist ideas had derived from his study of world art, in particular that of Asia, and he believed that the study of compositions was the most important consideration of an artist.

In 1924, O’Keeffe began to make paintings in various sizes, all of which focused on the centers of flowers, and she continued making them for decades.

In 1925, O'Keefees work along with many to follow presented the sexual anatomy of the flower in sharp focus. By drawing attention to the inherent androgyny of this subject, O’Keeffe could have been attempting to contradict the critical notion that her subject matter was related exclusively to her gender.
But if so, the critics in 1925 missed O’Keeffe’s point. They interpreted her flowers as they had interpreted her earlier abstractions, as expressions of her sexuality. In 1943, O’Keeffe finally responded: “Well – I made you take time to look at what I saw and when you took time to really notice my flowers you hung all your own associations with flowers on my flower and you write about my flower as if I think and see what you think and see of the flower – and I don’t.”

I've chosen to look at O'keefee as an artist not only because she bases a lot of her work on flowers but also because she looks at the anatomy within a flower, she bases a lot of her work and paintings trying to capture the beauty of the reproductive organs of a flower,as people we don't really judge certain elements of flowers as beauty we just get attracted by either smells or looks. This makes me relate to how flowers can also be perceived to have human traits, as people we are also attracted to certain scents of one another as well as first impression within our looks.

When i first seen the paintings I did make the misconception of relating the flowers to sexual meanings, O'keefee has strongly denied in her work that it is not what she is trying to portray through her paintings, I think as an artist it came as an offence that some critics would relate her work to her own sexuality when this is not something she is associating it with at all, but actually just the female anatomy of a flower. I think she is trying to take a step back from relating her work to personal notions.
There is one particular piece of O'keefee which really does make me think about how she is unsure about peoples interpretations of her work, it is the rams head with a flower, to me this piece resembles that of a woman's womb, and the flower resembles the egg.

 

In comparison to my work, i feel that Georgia O'keeffe and I share a lot of similarity's, not in the way we draw because she is much more of a fine art painter were as i don't enjoy to paint but enjoy to capture work through drawing and inks, I think we share the same subject matter which is flowers and not only flowers but the perception we both have on them, I have also tried to capture the beauty and strong essence of the reproductive organs of the flower rather than the beauty of it itself. I have done this by keeping away from things like colour because i see it as a distraction in my work, I like my work to be minimal and speak for itself. I wouldn't want to over power a drawing with overwhelming colour this for me would spoil the message that i am trying to perceive. Yes flowers can be beautiful and come in beautiful colours but for me its not what I'm trying to portray to my critics, i want them to realise the beauty of a flower and how i am able to create that through the use of line.