Georgia O'Keeffe often painted animal bones after finding them in the New Mexico desert.
Bleached bones became major subjects in O'Keeffe's New Mexico paintings. She collected objects such as cow, horse, and other animal bones from the desert and arranged them against open skies or stark backgrounds. Works including “Cow's Skull: Red, White, and Blue” and “Ram's Head, White Hollyhock-Hills” show how she transformed found remains into monumental forms.
O'Keeffe did not treat the bones as simple scientific illustrations. Their curves, holes, and surfaces allowed her to explore shape, light, scale, and the relationship between the natural world and the American landscape. She sometimes placed a bone centrally so that it appeared larger and more powerful than it would in ordinary life.
Her bone paintings are often discussed alongside her flowers because both subjects use close observation and dramatic enlargement. The correct category is animal bones, not shells, roots, or feathers, which were not the defining found-object group of her New Mexico work.