Georgia O'Keeffe repeatedly painted Pedernal, a distinctive mesa near Abiquiú, New Mexico.
Pedernal is a flat-topped volcanic mesa that became one of O'Keeffe's most recognizable Southwestern subjects. She viewed it from the surrounding landscape and returned to its strong horizontal profile in paintings made over many years.
O'Keeffe famously wrote that it was her private mountain and that God had told her she could have it if she painted it often enough. The phrase expresses her personal attachment to the form, not a legal claim to the land. Its simplified shape became an emblem of her ability to turn a specific place into an almost symbolic image.
Pedernal is distinct from Ghost Ranch, where O'Keeffe spent time and maintained a home. Ghost Ranch is a larger region; Pedernal is the isolated mesa that appears in many of her compositions.