"I found I could say things with color and shapes that I couldn't say any other way – things I had no words for." Georgia O'Keeffe

Georgia O'Keeffe (November 15, 1887 – March 6, 1986) began her studies at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1905. A modernist American painter, she built a seven-decade career and became known as the “Mother of American Modernism.”

O'Keeffe earned international recognition for paintings of natural forms, especially flowers, hills, and desert landscapes inspired by the places she lived.

Georgia O'Keeffe, Black Mesa Landscape, New Mexico/Out Back of Marie’s II, 1930, oil on canvas, 24 1/4 x 36 1/4 in., Georgia O'Keeffe Museum, gift of The Burnett Foundation © Georgia O’Keeffe Museum

O’Keeffe and photographer Ansel Adams enjoyed a 50-year friendship after meeting in Taos, New Mexico, in 1929. Both enjoyed trekking, and they traveled together through the Southwest in 1937. A year later, they took a pack trip to the Yosemite High Sierra.

The Shot

O’Keeffe’s quote came to mind in January while I was on a photography trip in Saudi Arabia. There were no words to describe the untold shapes painted in muted warm tones stretching across the playa (the flat-floored bottom of an undrained desert basin that becomes at times a shallow lake). The sensation of beauty was almost overwhelming as I went about framing and taking an image.

Thanks for looking,

Chuck Derus Zenfolio | Chuck Derus