Georgia O'Keeffe repeatedly painted Cerro Pedernal after seeing the distinctive New Mexico mountain from the Ghost Ranch area. The flat-topped peak became one of the most recognizable recurring landmarks in her work.
O'Keeffe used the mountain in paintings from different viewpoints and with altered colors and proportions. Her images were not intended as neutral topographic records; she simplified and reshaped the landscape to emphasize its graphic structure, silhouette, and relationship to sky and surrounding land.
Cerro Pedernal is near Abiquiu in northern New Mexico. O'Keeffe famously said that the mountain was her private mountain and that she wanted to own it, a wish fulfilled after her death when her ashes were scattered from its summit. The peak is therefore both a real geographic feature and a major symbol of her New Mexico art.