georgia o’keeffe

American modernist painter Georgia O’Keeffe is best known for her meticulously rendered, large-scale depictions of flowers and stark desert landscapes — Oriental Poppies, serene Calla Lilies, fiery Red Canna, deer skulls and wildflowers floating above the horizon.

A fiercely independent nonconformist, O’Keeffe created abstract distillations of natural forms that gained international recognition and confirmed her stature as one of the most significant artists of the 20th century. O’Keeffe took a personal and provocative approach to art, seeking to create an equivalent of what she felt she was looking at, rather than merely copying it.

In their gorgeous new picture book, Gifts from Georgia’s Garden: How Georgia O’Keeffe Nourished Her Art (Neal Porter/Holiday House, 2024), Lisa Robinson and Hadley Hooper focus on how O’Keeffe’s art-centric lifestyle as a sustainable gardener fed her muse and enabled her to flourish as a painter. Deeply inspired by place and environment, Georgia believed everything was art, and art was everything.

The book opens with Georgia at her easel, painting “flowers so lush and large they filled the canvas.” This microscopic perspective enabled the viewer to appreciate a flower’s minute details. She hoped to make people in the city slow down and take the time to really see the beauty that she saw.

*Love the stunning case cover under the dust jacket!*

But Georgia grew tired of New York and fled to New Mexico, where she felt free amidst its canyons, mesas and skyscapes. The scent of the soil reminded her of growing up on a farm in Wisconsin, where she had developed her “love of wide skies and sweeping vistas.”

The golden shimmer of a field of wheat;
rectangular rocks, twisted sticks, oval leaves;
barns with haylofts, windows, and doors.

Early on, she knew she wanted to become an artist.

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I’m thrilled and delighted to welcome award-winning author and independent children’s book editor Amy Novesky to Alphabet Soup today.

She’s here to tell us more about her latest picture book, Georgia in Hawaii: When Georgia O’Keeffe Painted What She Pleased (Harcourt Children’s Books, 2012), which will be officially released next Tuesday, March 20th.

Did you know that in 1939, Georgia spent nine weeks touring the Hawaiian Islands? She was commissioned by the Hawaiian Pineapple Company “to create two paintings to promote the delights of pineapple juice.” Though she loved the time she spent in Hawaii and painted flowers, waterfalls, and feathered fish hooks, initially she refused to paint any pineapples.

She found the sharp and silvery fruit quite strange and beautiful. She wanted to live nearby so she could study it up close.

But the pineapple company would not let her . . .

Instead, they presented her with a pineapple. Georgia was disgusted. She did not want to paint the fruit now that it had been picked, and she would not let anyone tell her what to paint.

Georgia was just being herself — committed to painting what she saw, as she saw it, in her own way, so that is precisely what she did.

Amy and illustrator Yuyi Morales have done a brilliant job of presenting this little-known chapter in Georgia’s life, a rare instance in which she allowed her art to be used for commercial purposes. Despite the pineapple problem, Georgia was fascinated and intoxicated by Hawaii’s unique and varied land and seascapes — lush flora, interesting lava formations, mountains, gorges, waterfalls, beaches, caves, streams, and of course, abundance of tropical blossoms. She thrived in this natural paradise, as she explored remote areas in Hana, Maui, and strolled along the black sand beaches on the Big Island with her trained eye fixed on unspoiled vistas of singular beauty.

Amy’s lyrical, sensual text and Yuyi’s evocative acrylic paintings rendered in textured jewel tones (forest/moss greens, fuschia, aquamarine/prussian blues, fiery oranges, earthy browns) beautifully echo the iconic artist’s creative spirit gladdened by a place of pure enchantment.

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