Redtree Times

Georgia O’Keeffe – Music, Pink and Blue No. 2

Whether you succeed or not is irrelevant, there is no such thing. Making your unknown known is the important thing.

-Georgia O’Keeffe

I am going to make it short and sweet today. I have to be out early this morning to take our newest kitten, Sweet Babboo, to the vets for spaying later today. I decided to run a rework of a very short post that ran several years ago.

It  was about he painting at the top is Music, Pink and Blue No. 2 from Georgia O’Keeffe. I had a calendar page with this image tacked to the wall of my old studio up in the woods for about ten years. I took a lot of cues from this piece about color, organic shapes and rhythm within a work. These things made it a favorite of mine

More importantly, O’Keeffe’s ability to make her unknown known resonated with me. It makes the point that revelation, the willingness to expose one’s totality including weaknesses and unknowns, is perhaps the key, the most important thing, to creating one’s art.

Every time I see this painting, I am taken back to the decade that I spent in that rustic studio where the image of it was tacked to the wall. It was a rough space with barely sufficient heat, no phone, no internet and no plumbing.

It had few comforts but more than that, there were few distractions. It was a great space for creating and having that cheap glossy calendar page image of it on my wall was a constant reminder for me to not worry about succeeding but to simply try to make the unknown known.

And as O’Keeffe points out, that is the important thing.