Georgia OKeeffe Quotes about Art

I found I could say things with color and shapes that I couldn't say any other way - things I had no words for.

Filling a space in a beautiful way - that is what art means to me.

Whether you succeed or not is irrelevant, there is no such thing. Making your unknown known is the important thing.

I decided that if I could paint that flower in a huge scale, you could not ignore its beauty.

To create one's world in any of the arts takes courage.

Fill a space in a beautiful way.

I like to convey the idea that art is important in everyday life.

I decided to start anew-to strip away what I had been taught, to accept as true my own thinking. This was one of the best times of my life. There was no one around to look at what I was doing, no one interested, no one to say anything about it one way or another. I was alone and singularly free, working into my own, unknown-no one to satisfy but myself. I began with charcoal and paper and decided not to use any color until it was impossible to do what I wanted to do in black and white. I believe it was June before I needed blue.

I long ago came to the conclusion that even if I could put down accurately the thing I saw and enjoyed, it would not give the observer the kind of feeling it gave me. I had to create an equivalent for what I felt about what I was looking at-not copy it.

The days you work are the best days.

So I said to myself-I'll paint what I see-what the flower is to me but I'll paint it big and they will be surprised into taking the time to look at it-I will make even busy New Yorkers take time to see what I see of flowers.

One can't paint New York as it is, but rather as it is felt.

I hate flowers - I paint them because they're cheaper than models and they don't move.

I often painted fragments of things because it seemed to make my statement as well as or better than the whole could.

Art is a wicked thing. It is what we are.

I had to create an equivalent for what I felt about what I was looking at - not copy it.

I know now that most people are so closely concerned with themselves that they are not aware of their own individuality, I can see myself, and it has helped me to say what I want to say in paint.

Objective painting is not good painting unless it is good in the abstract sense. A hill or tree cannot make a good painting just because it is a hill or tree. It is lines and colors put together so that they may say something.

I don't know what Art is but I know some things it isn't when I see them.

The abstraction is often the most definite form for the intangible thing in myself that I can clarify in paint.

It was in the 1920s, when nobody had time to reflect, that I saw a still-life painting with a flower that was perfectly exquisite, but so small you really could not appreciate it.

Bement was a very good teacher but he was a very poor painter. I guess he wasn't a painter at all. He had no courage and I believe that to create one's own world in any of the arts takes courage.