Ghost Ranch became Georgia O'Keeffe's best-known New Mexico landscape inspiration.
O'Keeffe first visited the Ghost Ranch area in 1934 and returned repeatedly to paint its cliffs, hills, and expansive skies. The dramatic red and yellow terrain north of Abiquiu offered a very different visual language from the urban subjects and flowers that had dominated parts of her earlier career.
She rented a house at Ghost Ranch for many years and used the landscape as a source for paintings such as Ranchos Church, Near Abiquiu, New Mexico and numerous works featuring the Pedernal mountain. O'Keeffe famously described the flat-topped Pedernal as her private mountain, saying that it belonged to her because she painted it so often.
Ghost Ranch and Abiquiu are related but not identical places. Ghost Ranch is a large retreat and education center in northern New Mexico; O'Keeffe also maintained a separate historic home and studio in the village of Abiquiu.