Georgia O'Keeffe famously painted flowers in extreme close-up during the 1920s.
Her enlarged flower paintings magnified petals and centers until they filled much of the canvas. Works such as Oriental Poppies and Black Iris transformed familiar botanical forms into bold compositions of color, line, and shape. O'Keeffe said that people often did not take time to look closely at flowers, so she painted them large to make viewers notice them.
Critics and viewers sometimes interpreted the flower paintings as abstract or as sexual symbols. O'Keeffe rejected narrow readings that reduced the works to anatomy, emphasizing instead her interest in seeing and presenting natural forms clearly. The paintings can be both recognizable flowers and highly abstract arrangements.
Flowers were only one part of her career. She also painted New Mexico landscapes, animal bones, skyscrapers, and architectural details, making her overall body of work much broader than her floral images alone.