Unit 1 Week 1 Skills Test

1       Let us go back in time to the 1940s. The artist Georgia O’Keeffe is camping in the desert. It is her favorite place to be, and she welcomes the heat and wind of the New Mexico landscape. As a child, she did not know that she would love the desert. She did know, however, that she would become a painter. She got the idea when she was just twelve.

2       O’Keeffe is a famous artist, but she is restless. She has moved to New Mexico from New York and has spent the past few years painting flowers. The flowers in the paintings are bigger than life. She recalls some of her earlier works: paintings of New York City skyscrapers, which were exhibited at the Brooklyn Museum, including “Radiator Building at Night” (1927). More than ten years after that exhibition, O’Keeffe returned to New York to show her flower paintings. The flowers were so big and surprising that even busy New Yorkers stopped to appreciate them.

3       O’Keeffe’s thoughts drift away from the hustle and bustle of New York. She thinks about New Mexico instead. She first visited the place in 1917. She is attracted to the colorful red cliffs here, which she calls the painted desert. She lives in a house in a quiet retreat called Ghost Ranch. She asked to rent a lodge that was far from crowds, and she has spent her summers at Ghost Ranch for years. She finally bought the lodge and the surrounding land. She loves to be alone, exploring the area and painting its beauty.

4       O’Keeffe reflects on her time in the desert. She remembers how she found some animal bones parched white from the sun. She picked them up and painted them simply because she’s drawn to the hidden forms of nature. Those forms allow her to express her deepest emotions.

5       On this day, O’Keeffe climbs around the top of gray formations in a stretch of hills she calls “The Black Place.” It is an area of rolling black and gray hills. She remembers describing the hills looking “like a mile of elephants—grey hills all about the same size with almost white sand at their feet.” She gazes around her and looks for shapes she enjoys. Her approach is to go into nature and draw and paint things that please her.

6       So, O’Keeffe finishes her hike and settles down in a folding chair. She closes her eyes and tilts her head back. She smiles at the warm sun on her face. She is inspired by the miles of badlands and their rugged mountains. It won’t be long before her art takes over once again.