Georgia O'Keeffe famously enlarged flowers in many paintings. She presented blossoms at unusually close range, using large-scale forms, simplified contours, and intense color to make familiar subjects appear abstract and monumental.
Among her best-known flower paintings are works featuring irises, jimson weeds, poppies, and calla lilies. Her flower images became central to her public identity, although they represent only one part of a career that also included landscapes, buildings, bones, and abstract compositions.
O'Keeffe resisted the idea that the paintings should be reduced to symbolic interpretations. Alfred Stieglitz and other commentators sometimes promoted Freudian readings of her flowers, while O'Keeffe emphasized her interest in seeing ordinary objects clearly and making people look at them.