New Mexico became Georgia O'Keeffe's long-term home and a defining source of her late work.
O'Keeffe first visited New Mexico in 1929 and returned repeatedly during the following decades. She was drawn to its light, mountains, desert forms, adobe buildings, animal bones, and broad skies. These subjects became central to her mature visual language.
She moved permanently to New Mexico in 1949, three years after Alfred Stieglitz died. She lived and worked in the Abiquiu area and at Ghost Ranch, later making Abiquiu her principal home.
New Mexico did not replace her earlier interests in flowers and New York architecture; instead, it became another major foundation of her work. The state is therefore associated with her, but it was not her birthplace.