“Why are you anxious?…Consider the lilies of the field…” – Matthew 6:28
“I’ve been absolutely terrified every moment of my life and I’ve never let it keep me from a single thing that I wanted to do.” – Georgia O’Keeffe
Georgia O’Keeffe was born on November 15, 1887 in Sun Prairie, Wisconsin. In her early 30s she began to create giant paintings of flowers. Over the course of approximately 30 years she created about 200 paintings of flowers which accounted for roughly 10% of her paintings. Her paintings brought the viewer into the flower with a perspective focused on the bloom.
While some viewers ascribe a sexual connotation to her work, O’Keeffe insisted otherwise. She pushed back and for decades consistently maintained that there was no such connection. Instead, she insisted that she painted flowers on a grand scale in order to help us slow down and see them as they are.
O’Keeffe described her floral portraits saying, “A flower is relatively small. Everyone has many associations with a flower — the idea of flowers. You put out your hand to touch the flower — lean forward to smell it — maybe touch it with your lips almost without thinking — or give it to someone to please them. Still — in a way — 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.”