Friday, July 17, 2020

Georgia On My Mind





Georgia O’Keefe is known as the Mother of Modernism.  She showed creativity from the time she was a child.  Her mother encouraged her for she was born into a maternal line of artists.  As a teenager she dressed differently and her creativity was part of her whole life.  She studied art in art schools and was influenced by several artists; John Vanderpoel, William Merritt Chase, F. Luis Mora and Kenyon Cox.

William Merritt Chase American painter, known as an exponent of Impressionism.  Francis Luis Mora, Uruguayan-born American figurative painter. Mora worked in watercolor, oils and tempera; drawings in pen and ink, and graphite; and etchings and monotypes; historical and allegorical subjects; murals, easel painting and illustrations.  Kenyon Cox was a painter, illustrator, muralist, writer, and teacher. Arthur Wesley Dow, whose Japanese art, composition, and design and she began developing her own visual expression through more abstract compositions.  If you research any of their work, you see their influence in her art.

O’Keefe began going blind due to macular degeneration and her need to create, to paint, to express herself kept on so she hired assistants to help her paint her last pieces.  She still spoke of seeing images in her head that she wanted to paint.  At the age of 90 she was unable to paint any more, on her own, and she is quoted as saying, “The thing that makes you want to create is still there."

Her work is very much about line, color, and composition with, what I sense, as most having erotic feminine images within a painting.  

The power of Georgia O’Keeffe’s artwork derives from her mastery of essential elements of art making: line, color, and composition.

I played with some of her style in this painting, although I did not get it blended as well as I could have.

Can you emulate her style of painting?  Do you see some of her work as being erotic and/or feminist in style?

©Carol Desjarlais 7.17.20

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