Georgia O'Keeffe Quotes
Born: November 15, 1887
Georgia O’Keeffe, a pioneering American modernist, transformed how we see the world through her intimate, monumental paintings of flowers, desert bones, and vast Southwestern landscapes. Her philosophy of radical perception—to truly see a thing, one must slow down and absorb its essence—makes her an unlikely yet profound guide to mindfulness. O’Keeffe believed in the power of solitude, silence, and deep attention, finding peace not in escape but in full presence. Her quotes resonate because they whisper a simple, revolutionary truth: peace is not a destination, but a way of looking. She teaches us that stillness is a canvas, and our awareness is the brush.
Georgia O'Keeffe Quotes (27)
"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 Okeeffe"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 Okeeffe"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 Okeeffe"To create one's world in any of the arts takes courage."
— Georgia Okeeffe"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 Okeeffe"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 Okeeffe"I decided to start anew, to strip away what I had been taught."
— Georgia Okeeffe"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 Okeeffe"I hate flowers - I paint them because they're cheaper than models and they don't move."
— Georgia Okeeffe"You get whatever accomplishment you are willing to declare."
— Georgia Okeeffe"The days you work are the best days."
— Georgia Okeeffe"I decided that if I could paint that flower in a huge scale, you could not ignore its beauty."
— Georgia Okeeffe"I had to create an equivalent for what I felt about what I was looking at - not copy it."
— Georgia Okeeffe"I feel there is something unexplored about woman that only a woman can explore."
— Georgia Okeeffe"I often painted fragments of things because it seemed to make my statement as well as or better than the whole could."
— Georgia Okeeffe"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 Okeeffe"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 Okeeffe"I don't very much enjoy looking at paintings in general. I know too much about them. I take them apart."
— Georgia Okeeffe"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 Okeeffe"It was all so far away - there was quiet and an untouched feel to the country and I could work as I pleased."
— Georgia Okeeffe"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 Okeeffe"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 Okeeffe"One can't paint New York as it is, but rather as it is felt."
— Georgia Okeeffe"Marks on paper are free - free speech - press - pictures all go together I suppose."
— Georgia Okeeffe"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 Okeeffe"Anyone who doesn't feel the crosses simply doesn't get that country."
— Georgia Okeeffe"I believe I would rather have Stieglitz like something - anything I had done - than anyone else I know."
— Georgia Okeeffe