15 November: Georgia O'Keeffe

Georgia O'Keeffe, the US painter, was born 130 years ago today in 1887. Here are some facts about her.

1. She was born in Wisconsin, the second of the seven children of Francis and Ida O'Keeffe, who were dairy farmers. She was named after her mother's father, George Victor Totto, a Hungarian count who came to the United States in 1848.
2. She decided she wanted to be an artist at the age of ten. She went to art school in Chicago and was top of her class - but her studies were interrupted by illness - she had typhoid fever and had to take a year off. Later, her father went bankrupt so she could no longer pay for her studies. She worked as a commercial artist to support herself until she got sick again with measles and had to return home. She didn't paint for four years, claiming the smell of turpentine made her feel ill.
3. It's possible that another reason she didn't paint was that she'd grown disillusioned with the traditional art taught by the college. The course was based on realism, and she much preferred abstract art. In 1912, she took a summer course where the approach was more abstract. She began to experiment with abstract art, based on her feelings.
4. Her work came to the attention of photographer and gallery owner Alfred Stieglitz, who was much taken with her work, exclaiming, "At last, a woman on paper!" He was so impressed he decided to exhibit her work in his gallery - without consulting her first. When O'Keeffe found out, she stormed into the gallery and demanded that he take the pictures down. Nevertheless, they came to an agreement. Not only did they work together, Stieglitz eventually left his wife for her, after his wife caught him taking nude photographs of O'Keeffe at home. He was 23 years older than O'Keeffe. He married her when he divorced his wife, and they stayed together until he died, despite his affair with Dorothy Norman, which badly affected O'Keeffe's mental health and resulted in another break from painting lasting several years.
5. O'Keeffe is most famous for her paintings of flowers, many of which have been said to look like female genitalia. O'Keeffe denied that she intended to paint pictures that looked like lady parts - she was painting close ups of the flowers as she saw them. She painted 200 pictures of flowers, but to put it into perspective, she painted over 2,000 pictures altogether. There are probably as many which depict landscapes, bones, rocks, shells, and even Skyscrapers. She also rejected any idea that she was a "feminist artist" and wanted to be known as simply an artist. She was, however, the first woman to be given an independent exhibition for her works by the Museum of Modern Art.
6. She spent much of her time in New Mexico, where one of her favourite things to paint was Cerro Pedernal, a narrow table mountain she could see from her house. It appears in 28 of her paintings and it was where she requested that her ashes be scattered after she died.
7. She would go out and paint in all weathers. She bought a car and customised it for use as a studio by turning the passenger seat around and resting her easel on the back seat. This meant she could paint in the strong desert sun as well as protecting her from the bees that were common in the area. When the weather was bad, she'd rig up tents to keep the rain off and wear gloves while painting when it was cold.
8. She would go camping well into her 70s. At the age of 74, she went on a rafting trip with photographer Todd Webb.
9. In her later years, her vision began to fail and by 1972, she could no longer paint without help. The urge to create was still there, though. A sculptor, Juan Hamilton, taught her to work with clay as well as helping her produce paintings. He also helped her write her autobiography in 1976. She died in 1986 at the age of 98.
10. She has a dinosaur named after her, Effigia okeeffeae ("O'Keeffe's Ghost"), because of her interest in the quarry where the fossil was discovered.

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