Georgia O’Keeffe: Matron Saint of the Brush

Called the “Southwest’s Matron Saint of the Brush,” O’Keeffe devoted her life and her art to “distilling in from and color the essence of the world she saw.” Her signature style was “abstracting from nature,” monumentalizing “something small in the interest of surprising viewers into taking time to look at it.” Alfred Steiglitz, her mentor, impresario, and eventual husband, recognized that she was doing something that had never been done in American art before. Upon seeing her charcoal “Specials” for the first time, he proclaimed, “Finally a woman on paper!”