Georgia O'Keeffe repeatedly painted animal bones after finding them in the New Mexico desert.
Beginning in the 1930s, O'Keeffe collected bones, skulls, and other natural objects from the desert landscape around Ghost Ranch and Abiquiu. She brought selected forms into her studio, where she studied their contours and painted them against expansive skies or plain backgrounds.
These works include cow skulls, ram skulls, and pelvic bones. Their hard, bleached surfaces contrasted with the soft atmospheric spaces in her compositions. Critics often interpreted the bones as symbols, but O'Keeffe explained that she was attracted to their beauty and the way they expressed the enduring character of the desert. Animal bones are therefore a more precise answer than the broader category “desert objects.” Her paintings of bones also differ from her enlarged flower paintings, which use living organic forms rather than found skeletal structures.