Ghost Ranch became Georgia O'Keeffe's longtime New Mexico home and artistic base.
O'Keeffe first visited New Mexico in 1929 and returned regularly for decades. She was drawn to the area's dramatic cliffs, dry colors, bones, churches, and wide-open skies. Ghost Ranch, near Abiquiú, became especially associated with her landscape paintings.
Although O'Keeffe lived at Ghost Ranch for part of her New Mexico years, she also maintained a home and studio in the nearby village of Abiquiú. These two locations are related but not interchangeable. Ghost Ranch was the spectacular landscape setting, while the Abiquiú property became her principal year-round home after she moved permanently to New Mexico in 1949.
The ranch's red cliffs and distinctive geological formations appear in works such as Ram's Head, White Hollyhock-Hills and Pedernal. O'Keeffe's paintings did not simply document scenery; she selected and reorganized forms to create highly concentrated compositions.