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. – Georgia O’Keeffe
I decided that if I could paint that flower in a huge scale, you could not ignore its beauty. – Georgia O’Keeffe
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
I had to create an equivalent for what I felt about what I was looking at – not copy it. – Georgia O’Keeffe
I hate flowers – I paint them because they’re cheaper than models and they don’t move. – Georgia O’Keeffe
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
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. – Georgia O’Keeffe
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
I believe I would rather have Stieglitz like something – anything I had done – than anyone else I know. – Georgia O’Keeffe
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
I don’t very much enjoy looking at paintings in general. I know too much about them. I take them apart. – Georgia O’Keeffe
One can not 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
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
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. – Georgia O’Keeffe
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. – Georgia O’Keeffe
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
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
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
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
