May 12, 2021 – O’Keeffe’s Faraway Place

“If you ever go to New Mexico, it will itch you for the rest of your life.” Georgia O’Keeffe

In the summer of 1929, a 32-yr-old modernist painter drove her Model T automobile from New York to a “faraway place” in northern New Mexico. By invitation of friends, Georgia O’Keeffe came to the Ghost Ranch for a short visit and stayed for almost three months. She may not have known she was looking for a spiritual home, but she knew it when she found it.

“As soon as I saw it, that was my country. I had never seen anything like it before, but it fitted to me exactly. There’s something that’s in the air, it’s just different. The sky is different, the stars are different, the wind is different.” Georgia O’Keeffe

Born in Wisconsin and after spending many years living in New York, O’Keeffe made New Mexico her permanent home. For 37 years, the high desert transformed her art into the most recognizable southwest landscape paintings and created an iconic mythic figure out of the artist herself.

“You know, I never feel at home in the East like I do out here. I feel like myself and I like it.” Georgia O’Keeffe

From her home in Abiquiu, she wandered the New Mexico country and discovered two extraordinary places that she came to call the White Place and the Black Place. She also ‘acquired’ a mountain. Vivian and I came here to discover these places and the mountain that define O’Keeffe’s New Mexico.

“God told me if I painted that mountain enough, I could have it.” This is what O’Keefe said about the Cerro Pedernal, a flat-topped, strong-shouldered mountain that she viewed from her backyard and painted several times. When Vivian and I stayed in the area, the mountain seemed to watch us no matter where we were, including our campsite on Pedernal loop.

A geological wonder of towering Gothic pillars and spires of sun-bleached sandstone, The White Place (Plaza Blanca) is in the Rio Chama River Valley near Abiquiu. While living in Abiquiu, O’Keeffe had easy access to the White Place, which she described as “a dull, glowing whiteness unbelievably gentle and voluptuous. Unbelievably beautiful this White Place that is of no use to man. Except to be beautiful.”

Today, the White Place is on privately owned land managed by the Dar al Islam Education Center in Abiquiu, which allows visitors daytime access to its hiking trails for free.

In contrast to the luminous White Place is the mercurial Black Place, a desolate, eroded badlands in New Mexico’s Navajo country. On several occasions between 1936 and 1949, O’Keeffe made the arduous journey over 150 miles of primitive roads to The Black Place. It became O’Keeffe’s favorite painting site.

The Black Place is about one hundred and fifty miles from Ghost Ranch and as you come to it over a hill, it looks like a mile of elephants – grey hills all about the same size with almost white sand at their feet.”

Vivian and I accessed The Black Place through Navajo Tours USA. Our guide, Kialo Winters led us to O’Keefe’s painting locations and then we continued deeper into the Lybrook wilderness where I photographed a valley of hoodoo formations.

O’Keeffe’s profound connection to New Mexico’s landscapes resonates powerfully as I have also felt a strong connection to certain wilderness places. O’Keeffe was drawn to the mystical wonders and beauty of the high desert and spent years exploring it. Consequently, her abstract paintings became her vocabulary – her visual language to describe her experiences in these places. With my camera in the Everglades, I have also created my own visual language, a means of describing how it feels to be in a place.

“I found I could say things with colors and shapes that I couldn’t say any other way – things I had no words for.” Georgia O’Keeffe

Vivian and I explored northern New Mexico through the eyes of Georgia O’Keeffe, and no doubt her art has brought many people here who seek out a visceral connection to the desert that inspired her art. After several days in O’Keeffe country, I came to the realization that it was not O’Keeffe, but the high desert of northern New Mexico that inspired me to develop my own visual language with my camera.