Georgia O'Keeffe On My Mind

Quote of the day:
“If you’re naturally kind you attract a lot of people you don’t like.”
--William Feather

Quote of the day no. 2:
“Myth is the step by which the individual emerges from group psychology.”
--Sigmund Freud

Years ago Charles Kuralt did a wonderful interview of artist Georgia O’Keeffe, who lived her later life in the countryside outside Santa Fe, New Mexico. Two things stick with me from that conversation. They both are responses to a question about how she found inspiration for her work.

O’Keeffe said that one way she found inspiration was to listen to Beethoven. But not just any Beethoven. It was the piano sonatas. And it wasn’t just any version of the piano sonatas. It was Rudolph Serkin’s recordings. When Kuralt asked her if she listened while she was painting, she emphatically said no--she simply sat and listened.

She also talked about the more-obvious inspiration of her natural surroundings. I remember watching as she attempted to describe how the quality of light synergistically met the landscape to create other-worldly moments.

That effect is indeed very hard to describe, yet it is real. There is something about how the altitude and latitude affects sunlight--it is both bright and slightly muted, and direct yet strangely angular.

Whatever the exact cause, the quality of light brings a unique beauty to much of New Mexico and Arizona.