Georgia O'Keeffe maintained a home at Ghost Ranch in northern New Mexico. The dramatic ranch landscape, with cliffs, badlands, and broad skies, became one of the most important settings for her paintings.
O'Keeffe first encountered the area during her New Mexico travels and began spending summers there in the 1930s. She rented a small house at Ghost Ranch and later used the landscape’s distinctive formations as recurring subjects. The region’s layered colors and isolated shapes suited her practice of simplifying natural forms into bold compositions.
Ghost Ranch is often confused with O'Keeffe’s Abiquiu home, but they were separate places. Abiquiu became her principal house and studio after she moved into it in 1949, while Ghost Ranch was a retreat and source of imagery. The ranch is also associated with paleontological discoveries and with the Presbyterian retreat center that operates there today, making it a cultural and scientific landmark as well as an artistic one.