My Georgia O’Keeffe Obsession Deepens – Following O’Keeffe to Boston

Those of you that follow this blog, and my work as an Artist, know by now that I have a serious obsession with the life and work of American painter, Georgia O’Keeffe. While on our recent trip to Boston for the launch of WINTERACTIVE 2025, the stars aligned and we had the opportunity to see the Georgia O’Keeffe and Henry Moore Show at the Museum of Fine Arts Boston.

In summer of 2024 we visited the home and studio of O’Keeffe in Abiquiu, New Mexico. We also took the time to visit the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum in Santa Fe. Both places offered a continued deepening of my understanding and love for her life story and her work. Building on my re-tracing of her steps in Hawaii and my interest in her connections to Canadian painter Lawren Harris, I came to discover new work and new connections with her paintings being exhibited in Boston. The exhibition also offered me the discovery of a new work I had not seen before. Famous for her imagery of crosses on the landscape, I came to find the museum had a very special Canadian connection on view, with Cross by The Sea, Canada. Painted in 1932 the piece depicts a tall gray cross is silhouetted against the blue sea and blue sky. A white picket fence surrounds it at bottom. The cross marks a grave for a priest of Mount Louis in Ontario, Canada.

The show opened my eyes to other works including many paintings of O’Keeffe’s famous erotic flowers that I had not seen in person before. Her early flower series caused an art-world sensation in the 1920s, propelling Georgia O’Keeffe to fame and notoriety with a little help from her mentor – and subsequent lover – the photographer Alfred Stieglitz. But Georgia O’Keeffe, one of the most famous female painters in American history, was far more than a mere purveyor of floral fleshy folds – erotic or otherwise. A founder of American modernism (painters who stuck a finger up at the Enlightenment ideal of better representing reality), her 900 plus works arced far and wide. From abstract masterpieces and pastoral mud huts, to thrusting skyscrapers, mountains, lakes and those iconic skull bones: her works came to define a unique fragment of Americana.

Having recently returned from from Abiquiu, New Mexico I was delighted to see some of O’Keeffe’s ‘door paintings’. Only months ago I stood in that doorway in the interior courtyard of O’Keeffe’s home and fell in love with the shadows and light much like the artist herself did decades ago.

Another piece that gleaned a grin was a painting of a fish hook and the ocean in Hawaii. The piece is unusual as it came from O’Keeffe’s time in Hawaii but is a very different painting than you would expect from her in such a tropical haven.

Oh those bones. The final room in the exhibition paired Moore’s organic bone-like sculptures against O’Keefe’s bones against skies of blue. Beautiful soft tones with pastel hues and organic shapes. The entire section of the show made you feel as if you were in the New Mexico desert with the artists. A ‘soft sanctuary’ to enjoy and languish in at the end of the show.

There were a few paintings by O’Keeffe I had never seen before that were on view at the exhibition. One of these was a painting depicting twisted horns on the desert ground. Painted in rich burnt sienna and burnished oranges, it is an unusual and striking piece. So many beautiful new discoveries in a career that spans seven decades and 2,000 paintings.

There were so many paintings that struck a chord with me in the exhibition, too many to cover off in one blog post. Finding the connections and absorbing the work, my heart was full when I exited through the gift shop.

Other Georgia O’Keeffe blog posts by Brandy Saturley;

A Conversation With O’Keeffe – Visiting her home and studio in Abiquiu, New Mexico

Georgia O’Keeffe in Hawaii – retracing her footsteps in Hawaii

In The Steps of O’Keeffe – Artist on The Road to Santa Fe

From Sara Angel;

The Lawren Harris–Georgia O’Keeffe Connection