Which mountain did Georgia O’Keeffe repeatedly paint near Ghost Ranch?

Georgia O’Keeffe repeatedly painted Cerro Pedernal near Ghost Ranch.

Cerro Pedernal is a flat-topped mesa in northern New Mexico. O’Keeffe saw it from the areas where she lived and worked near Abiquiú and Ghost Ranch, and its distinctive silhouette appears in multiple paintings. The mountain became one of her recognizable New Mexico motifs.

O’Keeffe once described Cerro Pedernal as her private mountain and famously said, “It’s my private mountain. It belongs to me. God told me if I painted it enough, I could have it.” The quotation captures her personal connection to the landscape, though the mountain itself remained a physical feature of New Mexico.

Cerro Pedernal is sometimes confused with other iconic regional landmarks, including Shiprock and Mount Taylor. Those places also appear in discussions of Southwestern art and geography, but they are not the mesa repeatedly associated with O’Keeffe’s Ghost Ranch paintings.