Georgia O'Keeffe made her first desert paintings in New Mexico in 1929.
O'Keeffe first visited New Mexico in the summer of 1929, traveling with the writer Rebecca Strand. The dramatic landscape, adobe buildings, mountains, bones, and intense light became central subjects in her art. She returned repeatedly and eventually made the state her permanent home.
Her New Mexico work developed alongside paintings made in New York and at Lake George. Rather than treating the Southwest as a passing travel subject, O'Keeffe built a long-term artistic relationship with its terrain. She often painted the same locations repeatedly, concentrating on changes in light, scale, and form.
O'Keeffe spent part of each year in New Mexico for many years before moving there permanently in 1949. She lived first near Abiquiú and later at Ghost Ranch, while also maintaining a home in Abiquiú. New Mexico is therefore more than a setting in her biography: it is a defining part of her artistic identity.