Biography of Georgia O'Keeffe

Georgia O'Keeffe was born on November 15, 1887 in Sun Prairie, Wisconsin to a farming family, the second of seven siblings. Her childhood farm life in the Midwest greatly influenced her art and her later life; she would never be as comfortable living in cities. When O'Keeffe was sixteen, the family moved to Williamsburg, Virginia, where she took art classes for the first time and was recognized as a talented student. Two years later, she studied art …

…s. In her long career, O'Keeffe focused on nature as well as man-made works, but rarely painted living creatures or people. She used bright colors, and created more than a hundred giant-sized flower paintings. She also painted fragments to represent a whole, like the hole in a pelvis, or a single wall. She created large paintings of desert scenery, and focused on close-up views of a single blossom or object, such as a cow's skull.