Georgia O'Keeffe repeatedly painted flowers in close-up so they filled much of the canvas.
Her enlarged flower paintings are among the most recognizable works in American modernism. By cropping petals and centers to the edges of the composition, O'Keeffe made familiar natural forms appear abstract, monumental, and visually unfamiliar.
She explained that people often overlooked flowers because they were small and temporary, so she painted them large enough to command attention. Her flower subjects included irises, poppies, lilies, jimson weeds, and roses.
These paintings are sometimes reduced to a claim that they were simply symbolic or secretly anatomical. O'Keeffe rejected that kind of fixed interpretation. Their visual impact comes from scale, color, contour, and close observation, regardless of what viewers believe the forms resemble.