010 - georgia o’keeffe

“I was bullied into thinking I was gay, but I’m not. I like dudes.”

A girl told me this at a skatepark a few summers ago. There I stood peeking over the coping at the vertical descent into the bottom of the eight-foot bowl. Could I make this drop in? The only other person skating the bowl could tell I was scared or hesitant or both and encouraged me tenderly: “You can do it. I know it.” With no helmet or knee pads, the bowl stamp of a true badass, she continued ripping lines into every section of the bowl when it was her turn and I kept nodding my head to pass when it was mine. The girl, probably 18 years old, came by me, took one wired headphone out of her ear and asked my name. She told me hers and then her nickname which she preferred. That’s when we got to talking about things.

“I’ve always been a tomboy. I never thought about it. This is how I dress and I love to skate. In school, everyone made fun of me, called me a lesbian and shit. I didn’t know. It started when I was so young, I believed them.”

I understand bullying happens. I experienced it since I never hit that growth spurt that was always coming. Bullying makes me fear bringing kids into this world, but this is beyond bullying. This is the first I’ve heard of someone being bullied into believing a false sexual orientation. And here she was, finished with high school and talking to me, an extremely kind, thoughtful, unphased young adult. A truly inspirational person I’m so grateful to have met. I eventually made my drop in and she cheered me on, “I knew you could do it!”

I introduce to you: Georgia O’Keeffe

Georgia O'Keeffe was a high school art teacher when a friend sent her abstract charcoal drawings to Alfred Stieglitz, a modern-art visionary and famous photographer who had a gallery in New York City. At the time, Stieglitz showcased works by Cezanne, Matisse, and Picasso. A year later, he exhibited O'Keeffe’s work. Sometime during or thereafter, the two became romantically involved and then married.

In a subsequent showing of her work, Stieglitz controversially included intimate photographs he had taken of O'Keeffe, positioning them alongside her paintings. This marketing decision by Stieglitz created a sexualized public image of O'Keeffe and an erotically charged tone for her work. Not close to her intention, Georgia rejected these opinions saying, “They were talking about themselves. Not about me.” For her, the flower paintings, like the male artists of the time, were exploring the realm of abstraction.

With my head balanced on the last shingle of the roof, looking down at the gutter, I side with Georgia and see her flora. I find flowers to be magnificent, beautiful, and beyond comprehension at times. I’ve never been able to look at them the same way since an arum lily was my first and last attempt at painting.

Heavily influenced by photography, O'Keeffe cropped her flowers and then painted them largely, forcing her viewers to look at what she wanted them to see: “The size it is, nobody would ever look at it. But if I enjoy the flower, I’m going to paint it big, so they will have to look at it.” The scale of her paintings allows O’Keeffe to highlight and explore the precise details alive and plentiful in her flowers. Of course some pervy old white dude had to make it about something else.

As their relationship broke down – his infidelity, shocker! – Georgia broke away, leaving New York City for New Mexico. At the height of her fame, she quit painting. She needed to free herself from Stieglitz, his network, and the undesired themes attached to her previous works. Three years later, Georgia delivered one of her most talked about paintings: Ram’s Head, White Hollyhocks-Hills, 1935. She was 47 years old. Don’t be in a rush to complete your best work.

At a time when the United States was near the end of the Great Depression and experiencing a horrible drought, O’Keeffe painted a deserted landscape under thick rain clouds, an optimistic signal of what is coming. This painting debuted her newfound love and respect for the animal skulls she was collecting no-thanks to the drought. "It never occurs to me that (skulls) have anything to do with death. They are very lively.” And their color paired perfectly in relation to the sky.

In this painting, her new signature style is accented by that of her first, a precious flower. Each hollyhock bud produces hundreds of seeds to spread its growth. I feel the ram’s head is floating in the center of the canvas, but as I try to make sense of this, the pops of color pull my attention towards them, not leaving me enough time to form a conclusion. I can surmise that the frame is an original designed by O’Keeffe and that is very cool.

Georgia O'Keeffe is an inspiration. Her work is beautiful and powerful and her persona is, like the details found in flowers, radical beyond comprehension (losing her vision at the end of her life, she switched to ceramics). Falsely labeled, cheated on and lied about, nothing could weigh Georgia down enough to shut her down.

There will always be noise in our lives. Like Georgia O'Keeffe or my friend at the skatepark, shake it, reject it, and keep your peace. Those are someone else’s words, not your own. All through life, people will tell you who you are and what you should do, but in reality, we’re all working with a different set of brushes and colors. Keep doing what feels true to you. Don’t think too much about it. Just drop in. I know you can do it. — Phillip Dillon

Here are a few quotes of georgia’s that made me think or smile:

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

“You get whatever accomplishment you are willing to declare.”

“I’ve been absolutely terrified every moment of my life and I’ve never let it keep me from a single thing that I wanted to do.”

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

“I said to myself, ‘I have things in my head that are not like what anyone has taught me—shapes and ideas near to me—so natural to my way of being and thinking that it hasn’t occurred to me to put them down.’ I decided to start anew to strip away what I had been taught.”

“…To see takes time like to have a friend takes time.”

“I don't very much enjoy looking at paintings in general. I know too much about them. I take them apart.”