My next artist in a long line of inspirations is none other than Georgia O'Keeffe. In my late teens, early twenties I was already entrenched into the worlds of Auguste Rodin and Salvador Dali absorbing pretty much all that I could on their works and of their lives. I would often walk up to the mall bookstore just to peruse the many wonderful art books that lined the shelves. Oddly enough, there were more of these books than what one would have thought. I don't think I could find such a line up nowadays. They also had a good selection of Frank Frazetta and Boris Vallejo books, so I had plenty to look at.
Anyways, on one such trip as I was using the bookstore as my own personal library I had stumbled upon a rather large volume of O'Keefe's paintings in the bargain book section. Now, paintings of flowers weren't my thing and still aren't, but her images weren't just about flowers. They said so much more. You can believe that she was painting 'hidden' female genitalia as some say or you can see something else, the way that she took rather intricate objects and simplified them using abstract shapes, while losing none of the details. I decided to investigate further and bought the book.
Whether it was the flowers, the skulls, the mountains, or the clouds, Georgia O'Keeffe's painting stirred something in me. Her paintings gave me more of an emotional response, a feeling, as opposed to one of a storyteller. Or did they?
She capture the blue sky in my daydreams.
The top watercolor was my first stab at her portrait, but I wasn't satisfied with the results. A little too saturated in the face maybe. So, I redid her portrait a few days later and was happy with the results.
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