Which New Mexico mountain did Georgia O'Keeffe call her favorite subject?

Georgia O'Keeffe called Cerro Pedernal her favorite subject. The flat-topped mountain rises in northern New Mexico and appears in numerous paintings and drawings from different viewpoints.

Pedernal was visible from areas where O'Keeffe lived and worked, including Ghost Ranch and Abiquiú. Its distinctive mesa-like profile made it easy to recognize, while changing light, weather, and distance offered fresh visual possibilities. O'Keeffe did not merely reproduce the mountain; she simplified and transformed it into a memorable emblem of the Southwest.

Her connection to Pedernal also became part of her personal mythology. She once wrote that it was her private mountain and that she painted it often because she could see it from her house. The mountain's repeated appearance demonstrates how a single landscape element could support many different compositions over decades.