In the late autumn of 1887, Tuesday November 15, at a farmhouse on a large dairy farm outside of Sun Prairie, Wisconsin, a baby girl named Georgia Totto O’Keeffe was born. She was a beautiful baby with dark hair inherited from her Hungarian mother, Ada and her round face and blue eyes from her Irish father, Francis O’Keeffe.

Georgia was born into a rapidly industrializing world. Brooklyn was connected to Manhattan for the first time by the Brooklyn Bridge. It was the country’s largest suspension bridge ever built and just recently opened. The Eiffel tower in Paris was also being built and was to be completed in less than two years. But those rising problems and turmoil in the city barely had any influence on the little pastor of Wisconsin, where Georgia had grown up. The country days in her childhood left her with a profound feeling for the companionship of nature and a sense for its different moods. Georgia preferred her farmer father to her educated mother. Even after she had achieved greatness in big cities like New York, she still fancied that she was more like her father. Because Georgia’s uncle Bernard often took her to a Catholic Church, she developed a special liking toward the church and its pools of colored light created by the narrow and arched stained glass windows. This may have had an effect on her vivid paintings in her later life.

At a young age of four, Georgia attended school in a small Town Hall schoolhouse. Although younger than everyone else, Georgia was brighter and smarter than most of the first graders. In the classroom she was known to challenge her young inexperienced teachers by asking perplexing questions and beating most of the boys in jumping and running competitions in the schoolyard. Her performance in school does not reflect her liking for school but more of Georgia trying hard to please her mother through her obedience.

As Georgia grew older, her time spent with her youthful Aunt Lola led her to be interested in art. Without the adult’s knowledge, she had closely observed many illustrations from her books and clothes. She tried to draw a precise portrait of a man and copied exotic pictures out of her geography books. The O’Keeffe family had artists in their history. Both of Georgia’s grandmothers painted pictures of flowers and fruit in flat, unimaginative folk styles. It was required that Georgia and her sisters would also learn the traditional way of painting, so her family arrange private lessons in art when Georgia was close to twelve. That winter, the O’Keeffe sisters spent time copying cubes and shapes from drawing books.

The year after, the three girls were sent to take painting lesson from an amateur painter Sarah Mann. It was during this time that Georgia developed many of her painting techniques that she would use in her later life. With Sarah Mann, Georgia learned to express realism through her paintings, when most other girls were obeying natural rules of traditional art. Later she struggled with her own problems as how to depict the brightness of sunshine and moonlight on the snow. At this time, the O’Keeffe family has already noticed the adept abilities of Georgia with the paintbrush. They hoped that their eldest daughter could at least pursue a successful career in art or hopefully become an art teacher. It was unheard of at that time, for a young girl to take her training one step further to become an artist.

When Georgia was in the eighth grade she asked a daughter of a farm employee what she was going to do when she grew up. The girl said she didn't know. But Georgia replied very definitely, "Well, I am going to be an artist!" She blurted out. Georgia was even surprised of her own sureness in her voice. She had no idea how it got to her and wasn’t sure what sort of artist she wanted to be. Her schoolbooks and her environment inspired her to create lovely paintings with great bright colors. When she told this to her family, they humored her and made remarks that irritated her greatly.

Being the person she is, Georgia at a young age did not feel limited by her sex. She understood that women were able to become professional woman as well as mothers and that higher education was available to women. In 1901 at the age of thirteen, Georgia entered a convent boarding called Sacred Heart Academy. There she was rid of her privacy and was constantly check by the nuns. Georgia’s family paid an extra $20 tuition fee to enroll Georgia in an art class. In the first day the students were instructed to draw a white plaster baby’s hand with charcoal. Georgia worked hard on it and finally when she was satisfied the nuns made negative remarks about her making it look too tiny and dark. The harsh criticism from the nuns pushed her to the brink of tears. From then on, Georgia took the nuns advice and remarkably made her strokes on paper larger and bolder. At the end of the year in school, the nuns liked her artwork so much that they exhibited them and chose one of them to be published in a catalog.

In 1902 her parents moved to Virginia and were joined by the children in 1903. The first fall in the new state, Georgia’s mother entered her into a small and prestigious all-girls boarding school, the Chatham Episcopal Institute. One particular teacher in Chatham, Elizabeth May Willis was an important influence in getting Georgia to focus on art and encouraged her to work at her own pace and afforded her opportunities that the other students felt unfair. She recognized her talent and allowed her to freely use the studio, and experiment with watercolors. At times Georgia would work intensely, and at other times she would not work for days. When it was brought to the attention of the principal, Mrs. Willis would reply in defense of Georgia.

After graduating from Chatham, Georgia was encourage by her mother and Mrs. Willis to art classes being offered in the Art Institute of Chicago, where she studied under John Vanderpoel. Like always Georgia was at the top in her class of forty-four students. In 1907 she went to study portraits and still lifes with William Merritt Chase at the Art Student League, a place where Elizabeth Willis had gone. Chase was famous as an art teacher. In his efforts to make American art more broad and perspective, he taught the best European methods in perspective, foreshortening, highlighting and shadowing. His specialty was the flashy brushstroke executed with rich pigments. His teachings would have a lasting impression on O’Keeffe’s paintings throughout her life.

One snowy January, Georgia and a group of art students from the Art League in New York, went to see the controversial Stieglitz and his Rodin sculptures. After that meeting with Alfred Stieglitz, the photographer, Georgia was intimidated by him and was unimpressed by the Rodin sculptures. She accelerated in Chase’s class and at the end of the year she was well awarded with one hundred dollars for a painting rendered in Chase’s style.

At the end of the summer of 1908, Georgia returned home to Williamsburg Virginia. Her brother was seriously ill and dying of tuberculosis, which had claimed two of her family members. That summer Georgia studied with Alon Bement at the University of Virginia. Bement was known for his experimentation with non-representational shapes and patterns, which force his students to learn basic concepts of balance and composition.

In 1909 she enrolled at a nearby college. In 1912 a friend in Texas wrote that a teaching position was open in Amarillo, Texas for a "drawing supervisor". Georgia applied for the position and was hired for the fall semester. During the summer of 1913, she assisted Bement and he continued to critique her paintings and during the way, introduced her to many theories of the Russian painter Wassily Kandinsky. The studies Georgia made with Bement and Arthur Dow later on, abstraction was incorporated into her artwork. She would remain here till 1914, making trips to Virginia in the summer months to teach at the University of Virginia.

After resigning her job in Amarillo, Georgia moved to New York City to attend Columbia Teachers College, until accepting a teaching position at Columbia College in South Carolina. Having a light schedule, she felt it would be an ideal position that would give her time to paint. Here she was to strip away what she had been taught to paint and began to paint as she felt.

Early in 1916, Anita Pollitzer took some of Georgia's drawings to Alfred Stieglitz's 291 gallery. He was to exclaim, "At last, a woman on paper!" He told Anita the drawings were the "purest, finest, sincerest things that had entered 291 in a long while." and that he would like to show them. Georgia had first visited 291 in 1908, and later on several occasions, but had never talked with Stieglitz, although she had high regard for his opinions as a critic.

In April, Stieglitz exhibited 10 of her drawings. She had not been consulted before the exhibit and only learned about it through an acquaintance. She confronted Stieglitz for the first time, saying "the paintings were private and hung on the wall for the public to look is just too much." Later Stieglitz convinced her how good they were and how he couldn’t resist but to display them and Georgia finally agreed to let them be hung.

In September, O’Keeffe went back to Texas and was inspired by the landscape. She began to paint a series of watercolors, including the famous "Blue" watercolors. She continued to contact Stieglitz and had her Solo show at 291 in April 1917. When the show was over, Stieglitz rehung her works and also took pictures of her along with the artworks.

The relationship of Stieglitz and O’Keeffe had blossomed from friends to lovers while working together in the confined spaces of the small studio on 59^th street. Although Stieglitz was twenty-five years her senior, but their many shared passions drew them together. O’Keeffe’s new job position gave her time to paint and Stieglitz encouraged her to develop new styles using different mediums. He also continued to take pictures of her, which eventually developed into a series and was exhibited in 1921. In 1923 Georgia began to work on massive flower paintings which may be her best known work. Many of these are close-ups of blossoms, which seem to focus on the heart of each flower. These paintings are not really in detail, but painted with utmost precision and in clear colors with shades and subtle tones.

With his persuasive qualities, Stieglitz convinced Georgia to marry him after, getting a divorce with his wife. So on December 24 1924, they married, he 61, she 37. A year later, the happy couple moved to an apartment on the thirtieth floor of the Hotel Shelton. Living there gave Georgia a different perspective of the city and was able for her to paint many exotic and realistic scenes of the city at night.

Following April, O’Keeffe and Rebecca Strand traveled to New Mexico and encountered a person that offered her a studio to paint in. There, Georgia began to paint the small beautiful landscape of Taos and learned to drive so that she can explore more of the desert. O’Keeffe continued to travel out to New Mexico and started painting cow skulls and bones that she found in the desert. Instead of using them as part of still lifes, she combined them with abstract flowers and backgrounds. Georgia would return to "her land" each summer until Stieglitz's death in July 1946, when she would move permanently to her home in New Mexico.

While Georgia was spending the summer of 1946 in New Mexico, Stieglitz suffered a cerebral thrombosis. She quickly flew to New York to be by his side where he died on July 13, 1946. She took his ashes to Lake George and buried them at the foot of a tall pine tree beside the lake.

As both the inheritor and executor of his estate, Georgia found herself busy the next three winters in New York cataloging his works and finding suitable institutions for his photographs and writings. Although separated for long periods of time through the years, Stieglitz had taken care of many business details for Georgia. She would now have to take on these responsibilities.

With this accomplished she moved out to New Mexico at a new house in Abiquiu. One year later, she closed down Stieglitz’s gallery; the last exhibition there was of her own. The large wooden crosses that dotted the landscape, as well as those adoring the many churches of this region fascinated her. The Penitents, a secret Catholic inspired religion that practiced flagellation and mock crucifixion, erected many lone crosses. These objects would appear in her 1930 to 1945 paintings.

In 1960 she held her first major exhibition since 1946. New people were confused of her work and wondered why her canvases were full of inanimate objects and void of human life. Although she made a few pencil portraits in her youth, she claims that she never had any interest in painting any human beings. Georgia never made a firm distinction between representation and abstraction the way other people did. They were sometimes objective to her and nonobjective to other people and she applied nonobjective principles to realism. Many of Georgia’s later works were inspired while she was traveling in plane. These serious of artwork includes the From the River and Sky Above Clouds.

By the 70's people began to take renewed interest in her work. She was invited to show at the Whitney and that her retrospective exhibit traveled to the Art Institute of Chicago and San Francisco Museum of Art...setting new attendance records. Her popularity was skyrocketing. In 1971 Georgia became aware that her eyesight was failing. At the age of 84, she was losing her central vision and only had peripheral sight. It was an irreversible eye degeneration disease, which caused her to stop painting in 1972.

Juan Hamilton, a young potter, appeared at Georgia's ranch house one autumn day in 1973 looking for work. She hired him for a few odd jobs and would employ him full time shortly thereafter. He became her closest confident, companion, and business manager until her death.

She later tried and experimented with pottery herself, and had a large kiln installed at the ranch for firing pots. Even with her dimming eyesight she was inspired by Hamilton and others to paint again. She hired a studio assistant to execute some of her ideas. During this time she agreed to accept interviews and other opportunities. In 1976 with Juan’s help, she wrote a book about her art and allowed a film crew to do a documentary at Ghost Ranch. Her love of Ghost Ranch remained as strong as the first day she had seen it more than 40 years before.

Georgia became increasingly frail in her late 90's and moved to Santa Fe where she died on March 6, 1986 at the age of 98. By her instructions, she was cremated the next day. Juan Hamilton took the honor of scattering her ashes to the wind and over her beloved land.

O’Keeffe was an American abstract painter, famous for the purity and lucidity of her still-life compositions. She was said to be one of the major leaders of the American Modernism and abstract expressionism movements, but O'Keeffe herself does not follow any movements or trends of art. She created abstract paintings and large, in-depth watercolor and oil based paintings of flowers that she came in contact with during her lifetime. Throughout the world, the work of Georgia O'Keeffe is widely appreciated for her sense of individual form and originality. These paintings would have a great amount of influence on modern twentieth century artists and continued to receive public acclaim.