Explore the most impactful and insightful quotes and sayings by Georgia O'keeffe, and enrich your perspective with the wisdom. Share these inspiring Georgia O'keeffe quotes pictures with your friends on social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, or your personal blogs, completely free. Here are the top 125 Georgia O'keeffe quotes for you to read and share.

Georgia O'keeffe Quotes : pic 000024250
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. -- Georgia O'keeffe
Georgia O'keeffe Quotes : pic 000039312
I always have a curious sort of feeling about some of my things - I hate to show them - I am perfectly inconsistent about it - I am afraid people won't understand - and I hope they won't - and am afraid they will. -- Georgia O'keeffe
Georgia O'keeffe Quotes : pic 000053760
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
Georgia O'keeffe Quotes : pic 000057397
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
Georgia O'keeffe Quotes : pic 000078191
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
Georgia O'keeffe Quotes : pic 000119865
I have painted portraits that to me are almost photographic. I remember hesitating to show the paintings, they looked so real to me. But they have passed into the world as abstractions - no one seeing what they are. -- Georgia O'keeffe
Georgia O'keeffe Quotes : pic 000125567
I'd been taught to paint like other people, and I thought, what's the use? I couldn't do any better than they, or even as well. I was just adding to the brushpile. So I quit. -- Georgia O'keeffe
Georgia O'keeffe Quotes : pic 000125599
When people read erotic symbols into my painting, they're really thinking about their own affairs. -- Georgia O'keeffe
Georgia O'keeffe Quotes : pic 000175902
Nobody sees a flower - really - it is so small it takes time - we haven't time - and to see takes time, like to have a friend takes time. -- Georgia O'keeffe
Georgia O'keeffe Quotes : pic 000186855
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. -- Georgia O'keeffe
Georgia O'keeffe Quotes : pic 000198075
War is killing the individual in it unless he has learned livingness - if he had it he wouldn't be a good soldier. -- Georgia O'keeffe
Georgia O'keeffe Quotes : pic 000212044
My pleasant disposition likes the world with nobody in it. (Life, March 1, 1968) -- Georgia O'keeffe
Georgia O'keeffe Quotes : pic 000212321
Whether you succeed or not is irrelevant, there is no such thing. Making your unknown known is the important thing
and keeping the unknown always beyond you. -- Georgia O'keeffe
Georgia O'keeffe Quotes : pic 000248665
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
Georgia O'keeffe Quotes : pic 000289271
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
Georgia O'keeffe Quotes : pic 000345173
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
Georgia O'keeffe Quotes : pic 000354277
My first memory is of the brightness of light ... light all around. I was sitting among pillows on a quilt on the ground ... very large white pillows ... -- Georgia O'keeffe
Georgia O'keeffe Quotes : pic 000361884
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
Georgia O'keeffe Quotes : pic 000366829
I realized that were I to paint flowers small, no one would look at them because I was unknown. So I thought I'll make them big, like the huge buildings going up. People will be startled; they'll have to look at them - and they did. -- Georgia O'keeffe
Georgia O'keeffe Quotes : pic 000375956
I'm frightened all the time. But I never let it stop me. Never! -- Georgia O'keeffe
Georgia O'keeffe Quotes : pic 000392181
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
Georgia O'keeffe Quotes : pic 000406364
I know I am unreasonable about people but there are so many wonderful people whom I can't take the time to know. -- Georgia O'keeffe
Georgia O'keeffe Quotes : pic 000411155
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. -- Georgia O'keeffe
Georgia O'keeffe Quotes : pic 000444211
It was in the 1920s, when nobody had time to reflect, that I saw a still-life painting with a flower that was perfectly exquisite, but so small you really could not appreciate it. -- Georgia O'keeffe
Georgia O'keeffe Quotes : pic 000456719
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. -- Georgia O'keeffe
Georgia O'keeffe Quotes : pic 000461785
My first memory is of light
the brightness of light
light all around. -- Georgia O'keeffe
Georgia O'keeffe Quotes : pic 000480776
I believe an artist is the last person in the world who can afford to be affected. -- Georgia O'keeffe
Georgia O'keeffe Quotes : pic 000485227
I've been terrified my whole life but it never kept me from doing a single thing. -- Georgia O'keeffe
Georgia O'keeffe Quotes : pic 000520908
It's not enough to be nice in life. You've got to have nerve. -- Georgia O'keeffe
Georgia O'keeffe Quotes : pic 000533968
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. -- Georgia O'keeffe
Georgia O'keeffe Quotes : pic 000560493
I like an empty wall because I can imagine what I like on it. -- Georgia O'keeffe
Georgia O'keeffe Quotes : pic 000593135
One cannot be an American by going about saying that one is an American. It is necessary to feel America, like America, love America and then work. -- Georgia O'keeffe
Georgia O'keeffe Quotes : pic 000624462
The morning is the best time, there are no people around. My pleasant disposition likes the world with nobody in it. -- Georgia O'keeffe
Georgia O'keeffe Quotes : pic 000629004
It was all so far away - there was quiet and an untouched feel to the country and I could work as I pleased. -- Georgia O'keeffe
Georgia O'keeffe Quotes : pic 000632556
The bones seem to cut sharply to the center of something that is keenly alive on the desert even tho' it is vast and empty and untouchable ... and knows no kindness with all its beauty. -- Georgia O'keeffe
Georgia O'keeffe Quotes : pic 000697081
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
Georgia O'keeffe Quotes : pic 000700227
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
Georgia O'keeffe Quotes : pic 000717180
Imagination makes you see all sorts of things. -- Georgia O'keeffe
Georgia O'keeffe Quotes : pic 000734300
To make your unknown known - that's the important thing. -- Georgia O'keeffe
Georgia O'keeffe Quotes : pic 000738126
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
Georgia O'keeffe Quotes : pic 000742383
Objective painting is not good painting unless it is good in the abstract sense. A hill or tree cannot make a good painting just because it is a hill or tree. It is lines and colors put together so that they may say something. -- Georgia O'keeffe
Georgia O'keeffe Quotes : pic 000753417
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
Georgia O'keeffe Quotes : pic 000762364
I said to myself, 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 decided to start anew, to strip away what I had been taught. -- Georgia O'keeffe
Georgia O'keeffe Quotes : pic 000765979
The abstraction is often the most definite form for the intangible thing in myself that I can clarify in paint. -- Georgia O'keeffe
Georgia O'keeffe Quotes : pic 000787201
Art is a wicked thing. It is what we are. -- Georgia O'keeffe
Georgia O'keeffe Quotes : pic 000797594
Now and then when I get an idea for a picture, I think, how ordinary. Why paint that old rock? Why not go for a walk instead? But then I realise that to someone else it may not seem so ordinary. -- Georgia O'keeffe
Georgia O'keeffe Quotes : pic 000816183
I don't really know where I got my artists idea. The scraps of what I remember do not explain to me where it came from. I only know that by this time it was definitely settled in my mind. -- Georgia O'keeffe
Georgia O'keeffe Quotes : pic 000822189
It is really so nice here-country-busy-busy with so many different kinds of things- ... I must say I feel far away in another world here- ... always we go to a new place ... the people have a kind of gentleness that isn't usual on the mainland. -- Georgia O'keeffe
Georgia O'keeffe Quotes : pic 000850565
We'd make love. Afterwards he would take photographs of me. (On modeling for Alfred Stieglitz) -- Georgia O'keeffe
Georgia O'keeffe Quotes : pic 000850573
I believe I would rather have Stieglitz like something - anything I had done - than anyone else I know. -- Georgia O'keeffe
Georgia O'keeffe Quotes : pic 000850578
I never knew [Alfred Stieglitz] to make a trip anywhere to photograph. His eye was in him, and he used it on anything that was nearby. Maybe that way he was always photographing himself. -- Georgia O'keeffe
Georgia O'keeffe Quotes : pic 000870946
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
Georgia O'keeffe Quotes : pic 000880219
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
Georgia O'keeffe Quotes : pic 000918892
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
Georgia O'keeffe Quotes : pic 000928244
If one could only reproduce nature, and always with less beauty than the original, why paint at all? -- Georgia O'keeffe
Georgia O'keeffe Quotes : pic 000930036
You are one of my nicest thoughts. -- Georgia O'keeffe
Georgia O'keeffe Quotes : pic 000966601
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 any thing be planted that cannot be tended to the fullest possibility of its growth ... -- Georgia O'keeffe
Georgia O'keeffe Quotes : pic 000977822
I am trying with all my skill to do a painting that is all woman, as well as all of me. -- Georgia O'keeffe
Georgia O'keeffe Quotes : pic 001004524
When I found the beautiful white bones in the desert I picked them up and took them home too ... I have used these things to say what is to me the wideness and wonder of the world as I live in it. -- Georgia O'keeffe
Georgia O'keeffe Quotes : pic 001071036
Slits in nothingness are not very easy to paint. -- Georgia O'keeffe
Georgia O'keeffe Quotes : pic 001085876
Anyone who doesn't feel the crosses simply doesn't get that country. -- Georgia O'keeffe
Georgia O'keeffe Quotes : pic 001085877
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
Georgia O'keeffe Quotes : pic 001103439
I made you take time to look at what I saw and when you took time to really notice my flower, you hung all your associations with flowers on my flower and you write about my flower as if I think and see what you think and see - and I don't. -- Georgia O'keeffe
Georgia O'keeffe Quotes : pic 001127726
I am not an exponent of expressionism. I don't know exactly what that means, but I don't like the sound of it. I dislike cults and isms. I want to paint in terms of my own thinking and feeling. -- Georgia O'keeffe
Georgia O'keeffe Quotes : pic 001165631
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. -- Georgia O'keeffe
Georgia O'keeffe Quotes : pic 001198178
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
Georgia O'keeffe Quotes : pic 001229409
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
Georgia O'keeffe Quotes : pic 001238020
You write about my flower as if I think and see what you think and see of the flower - and I don't. -- Georgia O'keeffe
Georgia O'keeffe Quotes : pic 001256102
Whether the flower or the color is the focus I do not know. I do know the flower is painted large to convey my experience with the flower - and what is my experience if it is not the color? -- Georgia O'keeffe
Georgia O'keeffe Quotes : pic 001280233
I see no reason for painting anything that can be put into any other form as well. -- Georgia O'keeffe
Georgia O'keeffe Quotes : pic 001291217
The days you work are the best days. -- Georgia O'keeffe
Georgia O'keeffe Quotes : pic 001297023
It seems to be my mission in life to wait on a dog. -- Georgia O'keeffe
Georgia O'keeffe Quotes : pic 001329859
The men liked to put me down as the best woman painter. I think I'm one of the best painters. -- Georgia O'keeffe
Georgia O'keeffe Quotes : pic 001361571
God told me if I painted that mountain enough, I could have it. -- Georgia O'keeffe
Georgia O'keeffe Quotes : pic 001379625
I've been absolutely terrified every moment of my life and I've never let it keep me from doing a single thing that I wanted to do. -- Georgia O'keeffe
Georgia O'keeffe Quotes : pic 001390612
RE: Lake George from a book by Lord. That's all I know.
There is something so perfect about the mountains and the lake and the trees ... sometimes I want to tear it all to pieces -- Georgia O'keeffe
Georgia O'keeffe Quotes : pic 001392883
I wish people were all trees and I think I could enjoy them then. -- Georgia O'keeffe
Georgia O'keeffe Quotes : pic 001435672
I have things in my head that are not like what anyone taught me - shapes and ideas so near to me,so natural to my way of being and thinking. -- Georgia O'keeffe
Georgia O'keeffe Quotes : pic 001437711
If only people were trees ... I might like them better. -- Georgia O'keeffe
Georgia O'keeffe Quotes : pic 001438362
I want real things ... music that makes holes in the sky. -- Georgia O'keeffe
Georgia O'keeffe Quotes : pic 001449521
One can't paint New York as it is, but rather as it is felt. -- Georgia O'keeffe
Georgia O'keeffe Quotes : pic 001451491
Sometimes I start in a very realistic fashion, and as I go on from one painting to another of the same kind, it becomes simplified until it can be nothing but abstraction. -- Georgia O'keeffe
Georgia O'keeffe Quotes : pic 001454447
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
Georgia O'keeffe Quotes : pic 001457192
Marks on paper are free - free speech - press - pictures all go together I suppose. -- Georgia O'keeffe
Georgia O'keeffe Quotes : pic 001457906
Happiness goes like the wind, but what is interesting stays. -- Georgia O'keeffe
Georgia O'keeffe Quotes : pic 001457907
I don't know what Art is but I know some things it isn't when I see them. -- Georgia O'keeffe
Georgia O'keeffe Quotes : pic 001457908
I hate flowers - I paint them because they're cheaper than models and they don't move. -- Georgia O'keeffe
Georgia O'keeffe Quotes : pic 001457910
I don't very much enjoy looking at paintings in general. I know too much about them. I take them apart. -- Georgia O'keeffe
Georgia O'keeffe Quotes : pic 001459090
Fill a space in a beautiful way. -- Georgia O'keeffe
Georgia O'keeffe Quotes : pic 001459556
I am divided between my man and a life with him---and some thing of the outdoors---of your world---that is in my blood---and that I know I will never get rid of--- I have to get along with my divided self the best way I can--- -- Georgia O'keeffe
Georgia O'keeffe Quotes : pic 001460897
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
Georgia O'keeffe Quotes : pic 001504279
All the earth colours of the painter's palette are out there in the many miles of badlands ... -- Georgia O'keeffe
Georgia O'keeffe Quotes : pic 001537803
Filling a space in a beautiful way - that is what art means to me. -- Georgia O'keeffe
Georgia O'keeffe Quotes : pic 001549570
I wish so much to go that I almost wish I had never been there. -- Georgia O'keeffe
Georgia O'keeffe Quotes : pic 001569012
I have not worked at all ... Nothing seems worth putting down - I seem to have nothing to say - it appalls me but that is the way it is. -- Georgia O'keeffe
Georgia O'keeffe Quotes : pic 001574405
I know I can not paint a flower, I can not paint the sun on the desert on a bright summer morning but maybe in terms of paint colour I can convey to you my experience of the flower or the experience that makes the flower of significance to me at that particular time. -- Georgia O'keeffe
Georgia O'keeffe Quotes : pic 001576000
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
Georgia O'keeffe Quotes : pic 001581485
To create one's world in any of the arts takes courage. -- Georgia O'keeffe
Georgia O'keeffe Quotes : pic 001589103
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
Georgia O'keeffe Quotes : pic 001607720
I look at my work and make up my mind about it. After that, neither flattery nor criticism matters to me. -- Georgia O'keeffe
Georgia O'keeffe Quotes : pic 001612475
I do not like the idea of happyness - 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 happyness. -- Georgia O'keeffe
Georgia O'keeffe Quotes : pic 001654962
To create one's own world takes courage. -- Georgia O'keeffe
Georgia O'keeffe Quotes : pic 001656219
There's something about black. You feel hidden away in it. -- Georgia O'keeffe
Georgia O'keeffe Quotes : pic 001668719
I have already settled it for myself so flattery and criticism go down the same drain and I am quite free. -- Georgia O'keeffe
Georgia O'keeffe Quotes : pic 001678459
I find that I have painted my life - things happening in my life - without knowing. -- Georgia O'keeffe
Georgia O'keeffe Quotes : pic 001686044
My painting is what I have to give back to the world for what the world gives to me. -- Georgia O'keeffe
Georgia O'keeffe Quotes : pic 001696420
If you take a flower in your hand and really look at it, it's your world for a moment. -- Georgia O'keeffe
Georgia O'keeffe Quotes : pic 001697645
His letters ... have been like fine cold water when you are terribly thirsty ... -- Georgia O'keeffe
Georgia O'keeffe Quotes : pic 001713512
I like to convey the idea that art is important in everyday life. -- Georgia O'keeffe
Georgia O'keeffe Quotes : pic 001715216
I decided that if I could paint that flower in a huge scale, you could not ignore its beauty. -- Georgia O'keeffe
Georgia O'keeffe Quotes : pic 001723180
You get whatever accomplishment you are willing to declare. -- Georgia O'keeffe
Georgia O'keeffe Quotes : pic 001723182
I got half-a-dozen paintings from that shattered plate. -- Georgia O'keeffe
Georgia O'keeffe Quotes : pic 001723183
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
Georgia O'keeffe Quotes : pic 001723184
I took back a barrel of bones to New York. They were my symbols of the desert, but nothing more. I haven't seen enough to think of any other symbolism. The skulls were there and I could say something with them. -- Georgia O'keeffe
Georgia O'keeffe Quotes : pic 001723185
Since I cannot sing, I paint. -- Georgia O'keeffe
Georgia O'keeffe Quotes : pic 001723186
When you get so that you can't see, you come to it gradually. And if you didn't come by it gradually, I guess you'd just kill yourself when you couldn't see. -- Georgia O'keeffe
Georgia O'keeffe Quotes : pic 001723187
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
Georgia O'keeffe Quotes : pic 001744141
I decided to accept as true my own thinking. -- Georgia O'keeffe
Georgia O'keeffe Quotes : pic 001786059
I realized that I had things in my head not like what I had been taught - not like what I had seen - shapes and ideas so familiar to me that it hadn't occurred to me to put them down. I decided to stop painting, to put away everything I had done, and to start to say the things that were my own. -- Georgia O'keeffe
Georgia O'keeffe Quotes : pic 001786722
Did you ever have something to say and feel as if the whole side of the wall wouldn't be big enough to say it on, and then sit down on the floor and try to get it onto a sheet of charcoal paper? -- Georgia O'keeffe
Georgia O'keeffe Quotes : pic 001807381
Anyone with any degree of mental toughness ought to be able to exist without the things they like most for a few months at least. -- Georgia O'keeffe
Georgia O'keeffe Quotes : pic 001845416
I'm glad I want everything in the world - good and bad - bitter and sweet - I want it all. -- Georgia O'keeffe
Georgia O'keeffe Quotes : pic 001857653
I had to create an equivalent for what I felt about what I was looking at - not copy it. -- Georgia O'keeffe
Georgia O'keeffe Quotes : pic 001865548
I've been afraid every single day of my life, but I've gone ahead and done it anyway. -- Georgia O'keeffe
Georgia O'keeffe Quotes : pic 001880082
I kn<>ong>oong>w n<>ong>oong>w that m<>ong>oong>st pe<>ong>oong>ple are s<>ong>oong> cl<>ong>oong>sely c<>ong>oong>ncerned with themselves that they are n<>ong>oong>t aware <>ong>oong>f their <>ong>oong>wn individuality, I can see myself, and it has helped me t<>ong>oong> say what I want t<>ong>oong> say in paint. -- Georgia O'keeffe