Georgia O'Keeffe repeatedly painted Pedernal, the flat-topped mountain visible from her Abiquiú home. The landmark became one of the most recognizable recurring subjects in her New Mexico work.
Pedernal rises in northern New Mexico and is part of the landscape around Abiquiú. O'Keeffe simplified its profile and surrounding terrain into spare compositions, sometimes presenting the mountain as a distant geometric shape and sometimes combining it with bones or vegetation.
She famously described Pedernal as her private mountain, saying that she could never paint it enough. That remark captures the difference between a landscape's physical location and its role as a personal artistic motif.
Pedernal should not be confused with Shiprock, another prominent New Mexico landmark that appears in Southwestern art. O'Keeffe painted many regional subjects, but Pedernal is especially associated with the view from her Abiquiú property.