Texas inspired Georgia O'Keeffe’s 1930s paintings of Palo Duro Canyon.
O'Keeffe lived and taught in Texas earlier in her career, including at West Texas State Normal College in Canyon. The nearby Palo Duro Canyon, often called the “Grand Canyon of Texas,” became a major subject in her paintings and drawings. She responded to its layered cliffs, broad spaces, and changing light.
Her Texas works show how landscape shaped her abstraction. Rather than treating the canyon as a topographical report, she organized it through simplified planes, contours, and strong color relationships. This approach connects the Texas paintings with the later desert imagery she made in New Mexico.
Arizona, Colorado, and Utah also have famous canyon landscapes, so they are plausible alternatives. The identifying clue is Palo Duro Canyon: it lies in the Texas Panhandle near Canyon, where O'Keeffe taught and lived during the 1910s.