Georgia O’Keeffe bought a house at Ghost Ranch in New Mexico in 1940.
She first visited the area in 1934 and became strongly attached to its cliffs, bones, plains, and changing light. The landscape around Ghost Ranch became one of the defining subjects of her mature work.
O’Keeffe’s Ghost Ranch house was separate from her home at Abiquiú, another New Mexico property that she later acquired and restored. The two locations are often mixed up because both were central to her life and art in the Southwest.
Her paintings of the region are not simply tourist views. She repeatedly returned to particular formations and objects, reducing them to bold shapes and carefully controlled color. New Mexico remained important to her visual identity for the rest of her career.