Ghost Ranch became one of Georgia O'Keeffe's favorite New Mexico landscapes to paint.
O'Keeffe first visited Ghost Ranch in 1934 and returned repeatedly, eventually making the surrounding cliffs and high desert a central subject. The ranch lies near Abiquiu in northern New Mexico, where vivid strata, broad skies, and isolated geological forms offered the kind of simplified shapes she sought in her paintings.
She often painted the same landscape from different viewpoints and at different times rather than treating it as a single scenic illustration. The red and yellow cliffs of the area appear in works such as Landscape of the Pedernal and related New Mexico paintings.
Ghost Ranch is sometimes confused with O'Keeffe's Abiquiu home because both places were important to her. They are separate locations, although both belong to the northern New Mexico landscape that defined much of her later career.