Georgia OKeeffe Quotes (35 Quotes)

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.

It was all so far away - there was quiet and an untouched feel to the country and I could work as I pleased.

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

I get out my work and have a show for myself before I have it publicly. I make up my own mind about it -- how good or bad or indifferent it is. After that the critics can write what they please.

You get whatever accomplishment you are willing to declare.

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

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

When you take a flower in your hand and really look at it, it's your world for the moment. I want to give that world to someone else. Most people in the city rush around so, they have no time to look at a flower. I want them to see it whether they want to or not.

I said to myself -- I'll paint what I see -- what the flower is to me but I'll paint it big and they will be surprised into taking time to look at it -- I will make even busy New Yorkers take time to see what I see of flowers.

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.

It was in the 1920s, when nobody had time to reflect, that I saw a still-life painting with a flower that was perfectly exquisite, but so small you really could not appreciate it.

Where I was born and where and how l have lived is unimportant. It is what I have done with where I have been that should of interest.

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

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.

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 ...

Before I put a brush to canvas, I question, Is this mine . . . Is it influenced by some idea which I have acquired from some man . . . I am trying with all my skill to do a painting that is all of women, as well as all of me.

To create one's world in any of the arts takes courage.

I find that I have painted my life things happening in my life without knowing.

He was nothing but a tool. ... He had no thought, no part in the painting, except that he could do what I told him to do.

To create one's own world in any of the arts takes courage.

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

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

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.

Nobody sees a flower really; it is so small. We haven't time, and to see takes time - like to have a friend takes time.

I decided that if I could paint that flower in a huge scale, you could not ignore its beauty.

The days you work are the best days.

I feel there is something unexplored about woman that only a woman can explore.

I found I could say things with color and shapes that I couldn't say any other way - things I had no words for.

I said to myself, 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.

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

I hate flowers - I paint them because they're cheaper than models and they don't move.

I've been absolutely terrified every moment of my life - and I've never let it keep me from doing a single thing I wanted to do.

I don't very much enjoy looking at paintings in general. I know too much about them. I take them apart.

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