Arboretum Summer Nature Camp 2014: Week 4 : Georgia O'Keeffe Inspires New Works of Art!

Georgia O'Keeffe (1887-1986) at her home and studio in Abiquiu, New Mexico.

Last week I showed campers the work of Georgia O'Keeffe, an artist who has been deeply influential in my own work, specifically her bone, skull and antler themed paintings. I took this opportunity to show the kids images of my paintings in order to demonstrate to our budding artists how we can be inspired by artists, past and present, and encouraged them to interpret O'Keeffe's work in their own way. Bones especially intrigued O'Keeffe. She saw them as beautiful flowers of the desert and symbols of life. Much like O'Keeffe, I find my deepest artistic inspiration in the land, wildlife and culture of northern New Mexico. To share this passion with my students and give them more insight into O'Keeffe's work was a very meaningful and exciting experience.

Georgia O'Keeffe

Summer Days, 1936

"I have wanted to paint the desert, and I haven't known how. I always think that I can not stay with it long enough. So I brought home the bleached bones as my symbol of the desert. To me they are as beautiful as anything I know. To me they are strangely more living that the animals walking around -- hair, eyes, and all their tails switching. The bones seem to cut sharply to the center of something that is keenly alive in the desert even though it is vast and empty and untouchable -- and knows no kindness with all its beauty."

- Georgia O'Keeffe

Georgia O'Keefe

Deers Skull with Pedernal, 1936

"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 O'Keeffe

Georgia O'Keeffe

From the Faraway, Nearby, 1938

Hilary Wootton

Extinction of the Schomburgk's Deer

www.hilarywootton.com

"I have picked flowers where I found them- have picked up sea shells and rocks and pieces of wood where there were sea shells and rocks and pieces of wood that I liked... 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."

- Georgia O'Keeffe