When you think of the state most associated with Georgia O’Keeffe, you probably think of New Mexico. Fitting: She lived in New Mexico for forty years. Being that O’Keeffe popularized the Land of Enchantment’s epic landscape, it’s a safe answer.
However, O’Keeffe is also associated with many other states: Wisconsin (upbringing), Illinois (schooling), New York (schooling and marriage), Virginia (schooling), South Carolina (teaching), and Texas (teaching).
Concerning Texas, O’Keeffe taught art in Canyon from 1912 to 1914 where she was introduced to the heroic landscapes and Southwest life.
According to Fred Stoker’s Georgia O’Keefe in Canyon, “Early in 1916 Miss O'Keeffe gleefully reported to her friends that she had been appointed to a wonderful position at West Texas State Normal College in Canyon, some eighteen miles south of Amarillo where she had lived 1912-1914…
“O'Keeffe was to be the head of the art department and its only instructor. For one hundred and fifty dollars a month (not a bad salary for that period) she was to teach drawing, industrial art, costume design, interior decoration, and methods of teaching drawing in the public schools.
“She no doubt arrived at the Santa Fe Railroad Station in Canyon in August or early September and was met by one of the faculty members who owned a buggy or automobile.”
Georgia O’Keeffe in Canyon, Texas. Credit: Georgia O’Keeffe Museum | Photographer unknown
Intrigued by Stoke’s description (a buggy?), my wife, friend, and I head to Canyon to check out one of her favorite places to paint, Palo Dura Canyon.
Before our time in Palo Dura Canyon State Park, we stop to view the exhibit at the Amarillo Museum of Art, Home, Love, and Loss—which includes Georgia O’Keefe’s watercolor Roof with Snow (1917). Sadly, her noted work Train Coming In, Canyon, Texas 1916 (one of my favorite early works) was in storage, resting after being on tour.
Train at Night in the Desert, 1916. Watercolor on paper. Credit: Amarillo Museum of Art
Reminding us of New Mexico’s marvelous, red-kissed landscapes, Palo Dura Canyon State Park is beautiful country, as the recent Paramount+ show—1923, season 2 highlights. It’s part of the Caprock Escarpment canyon system, reaching over 40 miles long, with an average width of 6 miles, though in some places it reaches 20 miles across. Its depth reaches between 800-1,000 feet.
Red Landscape, oil on board, 1916-1917, Panhandle. Credit: Plains Historical Museum, West Texas A&M University
During her time in Canyon, O’Keeffe is estimated to have painted roughly 50 watercolors. These were part of a larger body of work encompassing her travels in the region. According to some scholars, she painted up to 125 works during the period. She threw many away.
Reminiscing in the book Georgia O'Keeffe (Viking Press, 1976), she writes, "When I knew I was going to stay in New York, I sent for things I had left in Texas. They came in a barrel and among them were all my old drawings and paintings. I put them in with the wastepaper trash to throw away and that night when Stieglitz and I came home after dark the paintings and drawings were blowing all over the street. We left them there and went in. But I remember a large watercolor of many hollyhocks sticking out of a big waste can."
Imagine that. By today standards, she tossed out millions of dollars’ worth of work. If you take her Abstraction, 1917 watercolor as an indicator (sold for $1,134,00)—you can do the math.
Inspired by the region, O’Keeffe permanently moved to New Mexico in 1949, three years after the death of her husband Alfred Stieglitz. And though Palo Dura Canyon Visitors Center makes no mention of her return to visit Palo Dura Canyon, it’s because of O’Keeffe that many people—like our entourage— make their way to places an artist showcased. It’s as Irish writer Oscar Wilde muses, “Life imitates art far more than art imitates life.” Meaning, art inspires life, showing the relationship between art and lived experience.
Brian C. Nixon, Ph.D., is Chief Academic Officer and professor at Veritas International University in Albuquerque. As a writer, musician, and artist, his interests surround the philosophical transcendentals: truth, beauty, and goodness. You can contact Brian via his Bandcamp email address: https://briancharlesnixon.bandcamp.com
