New Mexico inspired Georgia O'Keeffe's repeated paintings of churches, cliffs, and desert. She first visited the state in 1929 and returned regularly before settling there permanently.
The region offered subjects unlike those of her earlier New York work. O'Keeffe painted adobe architecture, crosses, mountains, bones, cliffs, and expansive skies. She often isolated a form or reduced a landscape to strong shapes, colors, and contours rather than presenting a conventional panoramic view.
Among the places associated with her work are the village of Abiquiú and Ghost Ranch. The nearby landscape included Cerro Pedernal, a distinctive flat-topped mountain that became a recurring motif. She also painted the adobe church at Ranchos de Taos, a subject often discussed in relation to her New Mexico period.
New Mexico was not merely a backdrop for O'Keeffe. Its light, geology, architecture, and cultural landscape shaped her artistic vocabulary and her later way of life. She moved permanently to Abiquiú in 1949 and remained closely associated with the state until her death.