Georgia O'Keeffe made many iconic desert paintings in New Mexico.
O'Keeffe first visited New Mexico in 1929 and returned repeatedly before making the state her permanent home after Alfred Stieglitz died in 1946. The region supplied subjects that became central to her mature work: desert hills, adobe buildings, churches, bones, and the stark forms of the surrounding landscape.
She lived and worked especially around Abiquiú and Ghost Ranch. The area's light, geological formations, and high-desert distances differed sharply from the urban environments associated with her earlier career in New York.
New Mexico is sometimes treated as merely a backdrop to her flower paintings, but it became a major source of her visual vocabulary. O'Keeffe transformed local objects and places into simplified, highly personal compositions rather than producing straightforward documentary views.