Georgia O'Keeffe found the landscapes that became her signature subject in New Mexico.
O'Keeffe first visited New Mexico in 1917 and returned regularly during the 1920s. She was drawn to its stark light, high desert, adobe buildings, cliffs, bones, and wide horizons. These subjects became a defining part of her mature work.
She moved to New Mexico permanently in 1949, three years after Alfred Stieglitz died. Her homes near Abiquiú and Ghost Ranch gave her direct access to the scenery she had painted for decades. She often worked from carefully chosen motifs rather than trying to record an entire landscape literally.
New Mexico did not replace her earlier interests in flowers and New York architecture; it expanded them. O'Keeffe continued to paint flowers, rocks, bones, and abstract forms throughout her career. The state is sometimes treated as her birthplace, but she was born in Wisconsin.