Georgia O'Keeffe made her famous desert paintings in New Mexico and later lived there permanently.
O'Keeffe first visited New Mexico in 1917, near the end of a long period in which she had worked mainly as an art teacher and abstract artist. The state's cliffs, adobe buildings, bones, flowers, and intense light became central subjects in her work. She returned repeatedly during the 1920s and 1930s, often painting around Taos and Abiquiu.
After Alfred Stieglitz died in 1946, O'Keeffe moved permanently to New Mexico. She maintained homes at Abiquiu and Ghost Ranch, where she could work with greater privacy and directly observe the landscapes that had fascinated her for decades. The region's distinctive forms became recognizable features of her mature style.
New Mexico did not replace abstraction in her art; rather, it gave her new objects and landscapes to simplify, enlarge, and reinterpret. This is why paintings of desert cliffs and animal bones can look both representational and highly abstract. O'Keeffe spent the final decades of her life there and died in Santa Fe in 1986.