Georgia O'Keeffe by Alfred Stieglitz, 1920s
"My first memory is of the brightness of light — light all around."
"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."
"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."
"I decided to accept as true my own thinking."
"Filling a space in a beautiful way - that is what art means to me."
"I have a single track mind. I work on an idea for a long time. It's like
getting acquainted with a person, and I don't get acquainted easily."
"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."
"I want real things ... music that makes holes in the sky."
"Singing has always seemed to me the most perfect means of expression."
"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."
"If you take a flower in your hand and really
look at it, it's your world for a moment."
"I do not like the idea of happiness - it is too momentary - I would say that I was
always busy and interested in something - interest has more meaning to me
than the idea of happiness."
"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."
"If only people were trees… I might like them better."
"I hate flowers - I paint them because they're cheaper
than models and they don't move."
"When people read erotic symbols into my painting,
they're really thinking about their own affairs."
"I have lived on a razors edge. So what if you fall off. I'd rather
be doing something I wanted to do. I'd walk it again."
Georgia O'Keeffe, 1887-1986
by Maria Chabot
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