Georgia O'Keeffe Quotes

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.

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.

I'm frightened all the time. But I never let it stop me. Never!

Since I cannot sing, I paint.

My first memory is of the brightness of light — light all around.

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.

I had to create an equivalent for what I felt about what I was looking at - not copy it.

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

I decided I was a very stupid fool not to at least paint as I wanted to.

I decided to start anew, to strip away what I had been taught.

You get whatever accomplishment you are willing to declare.

I do not like the idea of happiness - 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 happiness.

I often painted fragments of things because it seemed to make my statement as well as or better than the whole could.

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.

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.

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.

Happiness goes like the wind, but what is interesting stays.

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.

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?

All the earth colours of the painter's palette are out there in the many miles of badlands.

I got half-a-dozen paintings from that shattered plate.

War is killing the individual in it unless he has learned livingness - if he had it he wouldn't be a good soldier.

I believe I would rather have Stieglitz like something - anything I had done - than anyone else I know.

You are one of my nicest thoughts.

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.

Anyone who doesn't feel the crosses simply doesn't get that country.

I look at my work and make up my mind about it. After that, neither flattery nor criticism matters to me.

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.

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

It seems to be my mission in life to wait on a dog.

There's something about black. You feel hidden away in it.

I'm glad I want everything in the world - good and bad - bitter and sweet - I want it all.

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.

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.

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.

Slits in nothingness are not very easy to paint.

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.

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.

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.

I don't know what Art is but I know some things it isn't when I see them.

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?

Art is a wicked thing. It is what we are.

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.

If only people were trees… I might like them better.

Bement was a very good teacher but he was a very poor painter. I guess he wasn't a painter at all. He had no courage and I believe that to create one's own world in any of the arts takes courage.

Objective painting is not good painting unless it is good in the abstract sense.

I see no reason for painting anything that can be put into any other form as well.

I am trying with all my skill to do a painting that is all woman, as well as all of me.

We'd make love. Afterwards he would take photographs of me. (On modeling for Alfred Stieglitz)

I believe an artist is the last person in the world who can afford to be affected.