Georgia O'Keeffe Quotes

Anyone who doesn't feel the crosses simply doesn't get that country. ”
- Georgia O'Keeffe

I believe I would rather have Stieglitz like something - anything I had done - than anyone else I know. ”
- 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 decided to start anew, to strip away what I had been taught. ”
- 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

I feel there is something unexplored about woman that only a woman can explore. ”
- 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

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 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

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

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 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 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

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

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

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

Marks on paper are free - free speech - press - pictures all go together I suppose. ”
- 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

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

One can't paint New York as it is, but rather as it is felt. ”
- 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

The days you work are the best days. ”
- 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

To create one's world in any of the arts takes courage. ”
- Georgia O'Keeffe