Georgia O'Keeffe made her famous desert paintings and settled later in life in New Mexico.
She first visited New Mexico in 1929 and returned repeatedly, drawn to its distinctive landscapes, adobe buildings, cliffs, bones, and intense light. The region became a central source of imagery for her paintings and an important part of her identity as an artist.
O'Keeffe lived and worked at Ghost Ranch and in Abiquiú. She eventually made New Mexico her permanent home, maintaining a close connection with the surrounding landscape and architecture.
Her New Mexico paintings are not simply travel pictures. She often enlarged or simplified individual forms, turning bones, flowers, hills, and doors into powerful compositions. The state is therefore both a geographic setting and a major creative subject in her career.