Ghost Ranch became one of Georgia O'Keeffe's best-known sources of subjects.
Ghost Ranch is a dramatic area near Abiquiú in northern New Mexico, known for red cliffs, mesas, and expansive skies. O'Keeffe began visiting the area in the 1930s and found visual material there for paintings of cliffs, hills, bones, and simplified desert forms.
She rented a house at Ghost Ranch and often worked outdoors or carried selected objects back to her studio. The region's distinctive geological formations appear in paintings such as Ranchos Church, Pedernal, and many works showing the nearby cliffs and mesas.
Ghost Ranch and Abiquiú are related but distinct places. O'Keeffe owned her famous adobe house in Abiquiú, while Ghost Ranch was a separate landscape and retreat area farther northwest. The two locations are often mentioned together because both shaped her New Mexico period.