Georgia O'Keeffe made most of her later landscape paintings in New Mexico.
She first traveled to New Mexico in 1917, but the region became a sustained focus after her visits beginning in 1929. The state offered the stark mountains, desert plains, adobe buildings, bones, and skies that increasingly shaped her imagery. She eventually divided her time between New York and New Mexico before settling there permanently.
O'Keeffe was especially drawn to the area around Ghost Ranch and Abiquiu. She painted the same kinds of forms repeatedly, but changed their scale, viewpoint, and color. A bare hill, animal skull, or adobe wall could become a monumental abstract-like arrangement.
New Mexico is sometimes treated as merely a late backdrop to her career, but it was much more important than that. The state became an active subject and an artistic environment. Her New Mexico paintings helped define the public image of O'Keeffe and strongly influenced later interpretations of American modernism.