The paradise that she found

By Ralph Ellis

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Georgia O’Keeffe had no peer in capturing on canvas the vast, stark, ever-changing beauty of northern New Mexico.

This place has inspired artists for centuries. But O’Keeffe found something in the sun-bleached bones and rugged mountains that reflected her spirit. In a magazine interview, she described her first visit to the state in 1917:

“When I got to New Mexico, that was mine. As soon as I saw it, that was my country. I’d never seen anything like it before, but it fitted to me exactly.”

More than two decades after her death, her paintings still channel the timeless power of this landscape. A visit to O’Keeffe Country starts easily but takes a little time and effort to finish.

The O’Keeffe Museum

The Georgia O’Keeffe Museum is two blocks off the Santa Fe town plaza, within walking distance of the restaurants, art galleries and shops of this thriving tourist destination.

My wife and I visited Santa Fe in mid-May. I’m a casual O’Keeffe fan, mainly knowing her sexy flower and bleached skull paintings and her reputation as an artist of high seriousness. I’d picked up that she lived by the “less is more” creed of minimalism.

A short video (narrated by part-time Santa Fe resident Gene Hackman) explained O’Keeffe’s importance in the American art world. Before settling in New Mexico she was a star in the New York art world, a sex symbol even. Her husband, photographer and impresario Alfred Stieglitz, promoted her career throughout their enduring but complicated marriage. In New Mexico she became something of a recluse, a slender, weathered woman who often wore men’s clothes.

The exhibit, titled “Modernists in New Mexico,” included many of her signature themes. The art was awesome but left me wanting to know more about the woman who created these masterpieces.

After asking the volunteers behind the check-in desk, we discovered that curious fans could visit the places O’Keeffe lived in Abiquiu, a small town about 50 miles north. We were going to the source.

Home, studio in Abiquiu

We gathered with a dozen other O’Keeffe fans at the Abiquiu Inn, a modest motel on U.S. 84, and rode in a small bus up a nearby hill to a walled-in adobe compound.

The guides explained the rules: no food, water, photos, backpacks, tape-recording, sketching or note-taking. If nature called, tough luck. It’s as though we were required to exercise the iron discipline O’Keeffe displayed during her highly productive years in New Mexico.

O’Keeffe made her second trip to New Mexico in 1929 but didn’t move to the state permanently until 1949, following the death of her husband. She turned this house, parts of which were built in the 1700s, into a minimalist haven dominated by white stucco walls and expansive windows.

Through a large picture window we gazed into O’Keeffe’s sparsely furnished living room with exposed beams. Here she relaxed with her Chows at the end of the day by listening to classical music on the hi-fi that still sits on the shelf. Smooth rocks lay scattered on a table. On the wall hung a single large painting, one of her “Above the Clouds” series.

In the patio we saw her famous door. She painted the patio wall and door as an arrangement of geometric shapes in more than 30 paintings.

Her small bedroom, tucked in the corner of the house, has gray walls, a simple slab of a mattress, a pale bedspread and a few personal touches, such as a bronze Buddha hand installed in the wall by the fireplace.

The studio, where O’Keeffe created so many great paintings, is a pale, still room. Her last years were plagued by ill health and failing vision, and the studio evolved into kind of a sitting room. Through the wide windows, we admired the Chama River Valley and the cottonwoods she painted so often.

The Ghost Ranch

We drove down U.S. 84 in our rental car and arrived early in the afternoon at the Ghost Ranch. There was one tour a day, four days a week, and only during the spring and fall.

Our tour group of about 15 people climbed onto a small bus, and guide Jane Hanna, wearing a loose plaid shirt and a Gilligan hat, narrated over the roar of the bus motor.

She held up O’Keeffe paintings while we looked at the actual subject of the painting in the distance, seeing how O’Keeffe left out inessentials, such as scrub vegetation, to accentuate the contours of the hills. Some paintings didn’t look much like the real thing; others, such as “The Cliff Chimneys,” were dead on.

This property was a dude ranch for the wealthy when O’Keeffe discovered it in 1934. O’Keeffe settled in and wandered the property, painting the spectacular yellow and red cliffs and rock formations. In 1940 she purchased a ranch house, which is not open to public tours. Once she moved permanently to New Mexico, she spent summers at the Ghost Ranch and winters at the other house about 15 miles away. Now the Ghost Ranch is an education and retreat center for the Presbyterian Church.

Hanna pointed out the flat-topped mountain in the distance, Cerro Pedernal. It was a recurring image in O’Keeffe paintings. When she died in 1986 at the age of 98, her caretaker scattered her ashes at the top of the mountain.

“It’s my private mountain,” O’Keeffe had said. “God told me if I painted it often enough I could have it.”