Arthur Wesley Dow taught Georgia O'Keeffe a theory of art based on color and design. O'Keeffe studied with Dow at Teachers College, Columbia University, in New York during the 1910s.
Dow encouraged students to organize visual elements such as line, color, and tone rather than simply copy nature. This approach gave O'Keeffe a way to pursue personal expression and abstraction. It was especially important after years of conventional academic training, which she found restrictive.
Dow did not directly teach O'Keeffe all of her mature subjects or techniques. Instead, his principles helped her understand composition as an arrangement of visual forces. Her later paintings of flowers, bones, landscapes, and abstract forms developed in her own distinctive direction, but the influence of his design-centered teaching remained significant.