Painting Flowers Like Georgia O’Keeffe

“A flower touches almost everyone’s heart,” and “I’ll paint…what the flower is to me but I’ll paint it big and they will be surprised into taking time to look at it,” stated Georgia O’Keeffe in the early part of the twentieth century.

When I taught a two day workshop to teenaged girls through the O’Keeffe’s Museum’s Art and Leadership Program at the Santa Fe Art Institute in the summer of 2012, my students learned about techniques that Georgia O’Keeffe used when painting flowers, as well as some techniques that were developed during the Renaissance, in particular, imprimatura and glazing. They combined these in their colorful paintings of oversized flowers and in the process learned about the importance of preparation in art and in life. The completed works were exhibited at the Riva Yares Gallery in Santa Fe.