Holding Sky

The place itself calls her name.  There is something of her here that will always remain, her memory lifted up by museums and galleries, yes, but also in the sky and rocks and light.  Georgia O'Keeffe lived in New Mexico immersed in the land, flora and fauna. The area north of Santa Fe where her houses are were more than places where she lived and made art. 

New Mexico has been calling me since I was small.  I have now visited the Santa Fe area once in every decade of my life.  When I was six, our family stopped there while relocating from Georgia to California.  I remember the inviting color of the adobe and the way the cold water of the swimming pool at the El Dorado hotel made my ears ring.  As a teenager I lost myself in the art seeping out everywhere.  Never had I visited a place with so much art and the vibrancy of that scene captivated the young artist in me.  We visited in summer, just me and my parents, and I have a memory of drinking very strong coffee in a cafe as we waited out a rainstorm while wandering Canyon Road.  When I was 20, my friend Laura and I drove there in a giant gold truck that she had to rent when her car broke down.  We went to the opera because our friend Erik worked there and we got served wine at a restaurant even though we were under age.  The land felt full of beauty and potential.  The next time I went back I was a brand new mom carrying my baby on my chest through the O'Keeffe Museum and wondering if I would ever get my creative feeling back again.  I was hearing echoes of something my mom had heard from her art mentor when she lived and studied in New Mexico in the 70s -- that a woman being married had a hard time being an artist and one who had children was going to find it nearly impossible. 

Returning now in the fifth decade of my life, at a veritable midpoint, I wonder why I stayed away from Santa Fe for so long.  I felt like I was coming home to a part of myself that have been cultivating for the past year -- the artist self.  I was so happy to be back there in the vibrant town and surrounding lands, where the feeling of creativity still abounds, with Georgia's spirit encouraging independence, beauty, resourcefulness and dedication. 

I had taken a watercolor class through Case for Making Friends a few months ago where we looked at images from the exhibit that was showing at MoMA in New York.  These were series of watercolor studies that she did with many repetitions and iterations.  The teacher of the class Melanie said O'Keeffe had actually preferred the medium of watercolor but switched to oils as they were the most well respected form for artists in her time.  The simple, colorful forms of her watercolors reminded me of my own work and I felt reassured that a big artist like O'Keeffe also loved the medium that called the most to me.  In these paintings she left white space between the colors so that the watercolors wouldn't bloom into one another and I have used this method as well to create negative space in my landscapes.  During the class I made a series of paintings emulating one of the Night Sky pieces and I felt a happy connection to her work through making the same shapes but playing with my own colors. 

There are certainly other reasons I feel connected to her as an artist and she is one of many artistic women I gather around me for strength an encouragement.  Georgia lived alone for many years (I noted the same small Chemex coffee brewer I own in her artifacts along with a "Pancakes for One" recipe card) and I imagine she enjoyed her solitude as much as I enjoy mine at times.  She also had great loves but that did not define or limit her creative expression.  She created her own fashion style that was inimitably "her" which has a certain androgyny that I admire.  She looked inside the little things and then made them so big they exploded a whole canvas with color and texture and detail. 

Walking the museum I found one painting that held me in place for a very long time.  It was Red Hills and Sky (1945) and she said this about the work:

"A little way out beyond my kitchen window at the Ranch is a V shape in the red hills. I passed the V many times -- sometimes stopping to look at it as it spoke to me quietly. I one day carried my canvas out and make a drawing of it.  The shapes of the drawing were so simple that it seemed scarcely worthwhile to bother with it any further.  But I did a painting -- just the arms of the two red hills reaching out to the sky holding it."

My home now has a view of the Cascade Mountains where two ranges come together in a V.  This scene has been calling to me quietly for a few months now and my most recent series is an exploration of this space that I look at nearly every day.  That O'Keeffe found the landscape talking to her in a similar way, it made me feel even closer to her and encouraged me to continue exploring the landscapes that are holding sky.