Rituals: Georgia O’Keeffe

I am fascinated by the rituals of artists. It is very interesting to me to see how artists crafted and designed their life encompassing their passion, their art. This is not an easy feat. I love Georgia O’Keefee’s work and became interested and curious in how curated her days, while still making her art.

“I like to get up when the dawn comes,” O’Keeffe told an interviewer in 1966. “The dogs start talking to me and I like to make a fire and maybe some tea and then sit in bed and watch the sum come up. The morning is the best time, there aer no people around. My pleasant disposition like the world with nobody in it.” Living in the New Mexico desert, O’Keeffe had no issue finding the solitude she craved. Most early mornings she took a half hour morning walk. Then, breakfast at 7:00 a.m., prepared by her cook. If she was painting, O’Keeffe would then work in her studio for the rest of the day, breaking around noon for lunch. If she was not painting, she would work in the garden, do house work, answer letters, and receive visitors. According to O’Keeffe, painting days were the best:

On the other days one is hurrying through the other things once imagines one has to do to keep one’s life going. You get the garden planted. You get the roof fixed. You take the dog to the vet. You spend a day with a friend. . . . You may even enjoy doing such things. . . . But always you are hurrying through these things with a certain amount of aggravation so that you can get at the paintings again because that is the high spot–in a way it is what you do all the other things for. . . . The painting is like a thread that runs through all the reasons for all the other things that make one’s life.

O’Keefe’s dinner typically took place at 4:30 in the afternoon–she ate early in order to leave plenty of time for an evening drive through her beloved countryside. “When I think of death,” she once said, “I only regret that I will not be able to see this beautiful country anymore.”