Georgia O'Keeffe (American, 1887–1986), From the Faraway, Nearby, 1937, Oil on canvas. 

During her trips to New Mexico, O’Keeffe often walked in the desert, picking up the sun-bleached bones she found there.  She even packed some of the bones in a barrel and sent them to herself at Lake George, New York, where she began her famous paintings.

Georgia O'Keeffe (American, 1887–1986), Red and Yellow Cliffs, 1940, Oil on canvas. 

O’Keeffe loved the New Mexico desert: “As soon as I saw it, that was my country. I’d never seen anything like it before but it fitted to me exactly.”

Georgia O'Keeffe (American, 1887–1986), Black Iris, 1926, Oil on canvas. 

Stanford Professor Emerita Wanda Corn says O’Keeffe’s skull paintings jolted a New York public that was accustomed to the flower paintings she had been producing for the last ten years.

Georgia O'Keeffe (American, 1887–1986), Cow's Skull: Red, White, and Blue, 1931, Oil on canvas. 

One of her most iconic works, O’Keeffe said this painting was, in part, a response to the search for the Great American Novel or the Great American Play by men in New York who, she felt, had never seen much of the country.

O’Keeffe’s skull paintings continue to inspire.  American artists Thom Norris and Erik Markow pay homage to O'Keeffe and the Southwest through their woven glass sculpture, Santa Fe Skull. 

Interior designer Kris Lajeskie in her Santa Fe, New Mexico studio. Lajeskie says O'Keeffe's paintings helped make cow skulls an essential element in the "Santa Fe Style."

A poster of O'Keeffe's famous Cow Skull: Red, White, and Blue hangs in the bathroom of Noreen Perlmutter's Santa Fe home.

Georgia O'Keeffe first came to Ghost Ranch in New Mexico in 1929.  A neighbor there gave her the skull of his favorite steer when it died so she could add it to her extensive bone collection.  O'Keeffe made a drawing of the skull and gave it to Ghost Ranch owner Arthur Pack as a gift – Pack adopted the artwork as the ranch’s logo.

O’Keeffe eventually purchased a small home on the grounds of Ghost Ranch, as well as a house down the road in Abiquiu.  She spent many years exploring and painting the surrounding desert environment.  Today, Ghost Ranch offers tours of the scenes and actual locations that Georgia O’Keeffe painted.

Looking down the road that passes O'Keeffe's Ghost Ranch home.

The tour bus at Ghost Ranch takes groups to the places and scenes that O'Keeffe painted and drives past Rancho de los Burros, the home she bought there in 1940.  Unlike O'Keeffe's Abiquiu home, the Ghost Ranch house is not open to the public.

Ghost Ranch Tour Coordinator Karen Butts leads the O'Keeffe landscape tour.  She holds a picture of O'Keeffe's Cedar Tree with Lavender Hills, 1937, before taking the group to the actual cedar tree the artist painted.

Butts points towards the site that inspired O'Keeffe to paint Hill, New Mexico in 1935.  She says O'Keeffe felt a sort of ownership for the New Mexico landscape and would often write to her husband, photographer Alfred Stieglitz, about "my red hills."

From 1973 to 1979, Carol Merrill worked on weekends as O'Keeffe's librarian, secretary, cook, nurse, and companion. Merrill sits in front of O'Keeffe's favorite rock formation, Pedernal.  The artist frequently said: "If I paint Pedernal often enough, God will give it to me." Upon her death O'Keeffe had her ashes spread on her beloved mountain.

Merrill remembers how she and O'Keeffe would sit in the shade of this pinon tree – when it was still alive – during their daily walks.

The entrance to the Georgia O'Keeffe Museum in Santa Fe, New Mexico.  The museum opened in 1997 and remains the largest permanent collection of O'Keeffe's work in the world.