Flowers were the subject Georgia O'Keeffe enlarged dramatically in many paintings.
Her close-up flower paintings present blooms at a scale far larger than viewers normally encounter them. O'Keeffe used this enlargement to make viewers look carefully at shapes, edges, folds, and color relationships. The approach helped turn familiar natural forms into powerful modernist images.
Among her recurring flower subjects were iris, poppies, cannas, and jimson weed. Some viewers and critics interpreted the works symbolically or sexually, but O'Keeffe repeatedly resisted the idea that her flower paintings should be explained only through such readings. She emphasized looking at the flowers themselves and the visual experience of seeing them large.
Flowers were only one part of her career. She also painted skyscrapers, bones, shells, doors, clouds, and New Mexico landscapes. The flower paintings became especially famous because their strong compositions were easy to recognize, but they belong within a much broader body of work that moved between abstraction and representation.