Georgia O'Keeffe was born in 1887 near Sun Prairie, Wisconsin. She is one of America's most important modern artists, well-known for her bold, beautiful and colorful flower paintings. She had some important things to say about art, courage, being an artist and being a woman. She died in Santa Fe, New Mexico, an area of the USA that she loved, in 1986.
· Making your unknown known is the important thing.
· To create one's own world, in any of the arts, takes courage.
· Where I was born and where and how I have lived is unimportant. It is what I have done with where I have been that should be of interest.
· 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 decided to start anew, to strip away what I had been taught.
· 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 decided that if I could paint that flower in a huge scale, you could not ignore its beauty.
· I'll paint it big and they will be surprised into taking the time to look at it – I will make even busy New Yorkers take time to see what I see of flowers.
· I think I am one of the few who gives our country any voice of its own.
· One cannot 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.
· One can't paint New York as it is, but rather as it is felt.
· Now and then when I get an idea for a picture, I think, how ordinary. Why paint that old rock? Why not go for a walk instead? But then I realize that to someone else it may not seem so ordinary.
· I found I could say things with colors that I couldn't say in any other way -- things that I had no words for.
· I don't see why we ever think of what others think of what we do -- no matter who they are. Isn't it enough just to express yourself?
· I feel there is something unexplored about women that only a woman can explore.
· 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.
· The days you work are the best days.
· You get whatever accomplishment you are willing to declare.
