Georgia O'Keeffe's Abiquiu house
I'm taking some time off at Coyote Ridge, our cabin in New Mexico. This week, Bill and I drove over to Santa Fe to visit the O'Keeffe Museum there, where her work from 1915-1917 is on display, with many other paintings. Her work spans decades--an amazement to see the creative achievements of such a prolific artist, most of it on the cutting edge of American art in her day.
Then we drove on to Ghost Ranch, where O'Keeffe lived and painted during the summers in the mid/late 30's, and where she bought a house in 1940. The landscape forms and colors are simply awesome. No wonder she was smitten.
Photo by Brian Spencer
We stayed at the Abiquiu Inn, then on Friday morning toured O'Keeffe's Abiquiu house. She bought it in 1945 and lived there until 1984. At 96, she needed more care than she could get in this rather remote place, and moved to her home in Santa Fe. Here is the studio in her Abiquiu home. The room, the whole house, really, is flooded with light--skylights, light walls, floors--important for an artist.
We drove back home via Taos, where we stopped briefly at the Mabel Dodge Luhan house, where O'Keeffe stayed in 1929. Friends in the artist colony there called Taos "Mabletown."
We drove home from Taos over the Sangres--a long, twisting mountain highway across the pass and down into the Mora Valley, lush and green, with the trees all in leaf and the creeks rushing full. And then back to Coyote Ridge. A lovely couple of days...
Reading note. Whether you succeed or not is irrelevant, there is no such thing. Making your unknown known is the important thing--and keeping the unknown always beyond you.--Georgia O'Keeffe