"I am not one who was born in the custody of wisdom. I am one who is fond of olden times and intense in quest of the sacred knowing of the ancients." Gustave Courbet

08 May 2012

Inspiration.

Georgia O'Keeffe, Part of the Cliff, 1986


The Georgia O'Keeffe Museum is opening a new exhibition entitled " “Georgia O’Keeffe and The Faraway: Nature and Image,” which opens on May 11, 2012 and runs through May 5, 2013. The exhibition focuses on " the beauty and elegance of O’Keeffe’s paintings were prompted by the intimacy of her ongoing experiences with the Southwest’s natural forms, especially because of the camping trips she made to remote areas."

[The exhibition contains] a couple of paintings, photographs and other documentation related to a 10-day raft trip O'Keeffe took down the Colorado River through Glen Canyon when she was 74. She made the trip more than once, knowing that it would never look the same once the dam was built and the canyons were flooded to form Lake Powell.

Kastner pointed to one image of O'Keeffe by photographer Todd Webb.

"It shows her beautiful artist hands, but they're at work, paddling a rubber raft down the river. It's extraordinary," she said.

Without modern amenities like GPS or four-wheel drive, O'Keeffe would set off alone or sometimes with friends to find her inspiration. There are stories of her bumping along primitive roads and finding refuge from the harsh sunlight in the back of her 1920s Ford Sedan. She would take out the driver's seat and turn the passenger seat around. It was just enough room to set up a 30-by-40-inch canvas.


Read the rest here.

More on the exhibition at The O'Keeffe Museum.

No comments: