Georgia O'Keeffe taught in Canyon, Texas, before moving to New York.
O'Keeffe accepted a teaching position at West Texas State Normal College in Canyon in 1916. She taught art and continued developing the abstract charcoal drawings that brought her work to Alfred Stieglitz's attention. Canyon is located in the Texas Panhandle near Palo Duro Canyon.
Her time in Texas was artistically productive. The open landscape and strong light contributed to her growing interest in simplified forms and abstraction. She later taught at the University of Texas at Austin, but Canyon was the earlier Texas teaching post linked to the beginning of her professional breakthrough.
Canyon is sometimes confused with Austin because both appear in accounts of O'Keeffe's Texas career. Austin came later, from 1918 to 1919. The distinction matters when placing her 1916 exhibition and her developing artistic ideas chronologically.