“The present work is one of four images O’Keeffe painted of the spectacular waterfalls in the Īao Valley on Maui. Though her subject here is entirely unique within her celebrated oeuvre of natural scenery, the lens through which she interprets it evokes her profound, almost spiritual reaction to the landscape, the quality that pervades the entirety of her body of work. Here, O’Keeffe emphasizes the drama of the setting by allowing the powerful cliffs to dominate the composition. She eliminates the foreground entirely and includes only a small area of blue sky and clouds, implying that the viewer is closely positioned to these mountainous forms. O’Keeffe captures the fecundity of the Hawaiian landscape by applying passages of shades of verdant green to render her subject. Her crisply defined contours and careful modeling of forms create sculptural depth on the picture plane, while simultaneously her disregard for traditional scale and spatial depth contributes to a modern sense of flattened patterning. As such, the traditional landscape is transformed into an abstract design of organic lines and shapes.”

READ FULL ESSAY: Sotheby’s

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Georgia O’Keeffe At Sunnyside

Georgia O’Keeffe at Sotheby’s

Georgia O’Keeffe at Art Institute of Chicago

Art and Artists: Georgia O’Keeffe – part 3

Georgia O’Keeffe at Milwaukee Art Museum

Georgia O’Keeffe paintings at Georgia O’Keeffe Museum

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Georgia O’Keeffe at The Art Story

10.14 Georgia O’Keeffe, an American Painter at Her Half of History

Hat Tip

Thanks to shoreacres (Linda at The Task at Hand blog) who introduced me to a fascinating article, Georgia O’Keeffe’s Blindness: An Interview with Carol Merrill, about Georgia O’Keeffe’s struggle with macular degeneration in her later years.

Hauser & Villegas: ‘Spanish Romance’

Jean-Philippe Rameau: Cinquième Concert, La Cupis

Thanks for Visiting 🌻

~Sunnyside