Georgia O'Keeffe first visited Taos, New Mexico, in 1929 and returned to the region for repeated painting trips.
She traveled to New Mexico with the writer Rebecca Strand in the summer of 1929. The high desert, adobe architecture, mountains, bones, and intense light became important subjects in O'Keeffe's work. Taos was an early base for her exploration of the region.
O'Keeffe later became closely associated with Abiquiú and Ghost Ranch, where she found landscapes that supplied many of her best-known subjects. Her New Mexico imagery therefore includes several distinct places rather than one single location.
Taos is sometimes confused with Santa Fe or Abiquiú because all three are central to her New Mexico story. Santa Fe became her permanent home late in life, while Abiquiú and Ghost Ranch were especially important working environments.