I had to create an equivalent for what I felt about what I was looking at - not copy it.
Georgia O'KeeffeThat nervous energy that makes people like you and I want and go after everything in the world - bump our heads on all the hard walls and scratch our hands on all the briars - but it makes living great - doesn't it - I'm glad I want everything in the world - good and bad - bitter and sweet - I want it all and a lot of it too
Georgia O'KeeffeI have lived on a razors edge. So what if you fall off. I'd rather be doing something I wanted to do. I'd walk it again.
Georgia O'KeeffeI'd been taught to paint like other people, and I thought, what's the use? I couldn't do any better than they, or even as well. I was just adding to the brushpile. So I quit.
Georgia O'KeeffeI don't very much enjoy looking at paintings in general. I know too much about them. I take them apart.
Georgia O'KeeffeOn the way I stood a moment looking out across the marshes with tall cattails, a patch of water, more marsh, then the woods with a few birch trees shining white at the edge on beyond. In the darkness it all looked just like I felt. Wet and swampy and gloomy, very gloomy. In the morning I painted it. My memory of it is that it was probably my best painting that summer.
Georgia O'Keeffe