Alon Bement's ideas about artistic freedom influenced Georgia O'Keeffe at the University of Virginia.
Bement was an art educator and assistant to Arthur Wesley Dow. O'Keeffe encountered his teaching while taking summer classes at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, where she studied in 1912 and 1913. His approach emphasized design, composition, and personal response rather than simply copying nature.
Those principles helped prepare O'Keeffe for Dow's broader ideas about art. After Virginia, she studied with Dow at Teachers College, Columbia University. The experience encouraged her to make work based on simplified forms and expressive arrangements, an important step toward abstraction.
Bement is sometimes confused with Dow because both were part of the same influential teaching network. Dow was O'Keeffe's direct instructor at Columbia, while Bement introduced related ideas during her earlier Virginia studies.