In Oak Leaves Pink and Gray, O’Keeffe examines every crevice and vein of the oak tree leaves. She depicts of oak leaves that are enlarged to an exaggerated size. With each one a different color, she implies the season of when this painting was done. In this simple painting, she explores the world of harmony of decay and rebirth in nature, a theme prevalent in her works. Here, O'Keeffe has created a composition that is both objective and nonobjective, because the leaves are a recognizable subject and they are abstract, because the broad expanse of color and its simplicity that leads the viewer to perceive the image in terms of pure form and color.
In it O’Keeffe used bright colors of pink and red outlining the first leaf, putting emphasis mostly on the overlapping. In doing this, viewers of her artwork can clearly see the place where the two leafs overlap and cover each other. Each leaf do not seem to blend in with each other, instead one seemed to pop out from another. Her uses of color in this painting greatly represent her ideals of artwork, which is to reveal the real meaning of objects by emphasis, elimination and selection. Her works, including this one, tends to express realism through abstraction. This set of leaves looks like it was drawn after being observed in different angles and lighting to produce such an effect.
A painting of great color and yet simple looking leaves of an oak tree, perfectly layered and contrasted by the greenish black background greatly examines the idea of abstract expressionism. Is it abstract? This is a question that caused me to ponder. Like mentioned earlier, her artworks often can seem objective and non-objective. This confuses me along with millions of other people that wonder about her thoughts and ideas. At one time it looks like two simple oak tree leaves, fallen from their soon-to-be-dead branches and onto the green grass field, where it exhibits harmony with nature. Then again, I see vivid and vibrant colors that are applied and a painting so simple that it lost its resemblance to the reality of the initial object. At one point, this has led me to believe that it had no meaning at all. Maybe it was just the genius of O’Keeffe at creating harmony in her work by using contrasting colors and showing emphasis on parts of the painting and still being able to expose the object in her work clearly in ones eyes.
After looking at this painting done by O’Keeffe, I realized that art does not have to show exactly what is there. Composition of an artwork is very important. How we allocate each part of our painting or drawing affects the harmony in the picture. For example if O’Keeffe had maybe increased the overlap between the two leaves, the emphasis wouldn’t have been as great as it is now. It would show that maybe the artist favored the pink one more than the other or the brown one more than the pink one. The meaning would completely change and it greatly depended on the composition of the elements of art.
O’Keeffe’s artwork is not something easily understood. Its either you see it or you don’t. In most cases people don’t and even herself doesn’t understand what they mean exactly. Lines, symbols and colors are placed in her painting so perfectly that they speaks to the viewer in eloquence. "The meaning is on the canvas," she said once. And maybe it is and maybe that is the hard part in trying to comprehend her works.