O'Keeffe began her training early with private art lessons at home. The foundation of her future as an artist was made. When O'Keeffe was in the eighth grade she asked a daughter of a farm employee what she was going to do when she grew up. The girl said she didn't know. O'Keeffe replied very definitely, "...I am going to be an artist!"--"I don't really know where I got my artist idea...I only know that by that time it was definitely settled in my mind."

She entered the Sacred Heart Academy, an ar

After receiving her diploma in 1905 she left for Chicago to live with her aunt and attend the Art Institute of Chicago. She did not return to the Institute the following year after getting Typhoid Fever. Instead, in 1907 she enrolled at the Art Student League in New York City. Discouraged with her work, she did not return to the League in the fall of 1908, but moved back to Chicago and found work as a commercial artist. During this period O'Keeffe did not pick up a brush, and said that the smell of turpentine made her sick.

She was encouraged by Stieglitz to return to New York. By this time he had fallen in love with O'Keeffe and wanted to pursue a relationship. He being in an unhappy marriage, had moved out from the family home and into his studio. She boarded a train in June of 1918 to return to New York, Stieglitz, and to a new life that would make her into one of the most important artist of the century.

In May of 1929, Georgia would set out by train with her friend, Beck Strand, to Taos, New Mexico...a trip that would forever change her life. Georgia found that the thin, dry air enabled her to see farther and at times could see several approaching thunderstorms in the distance at once. She affectionately referred to the land of northern New Mexico as "the faraway", better defined as a place of stark beauty and infinite space.

Georgia would return to New Mexico, which she considered "her land", each summer until Stieglitz's death in 1946. O'Keeffe spent three years in the city settling his estate. In 1949 at the of age 62, she made New Mexico her permanent residence. She dividing her time between her summer home at Ghost Ranch and an adobe house she had renovated in the historic village of Abiquiu. O'Keeffe traveled internationally, painted and continued to enjoy her status as a supreme American artist. To add to her accomplishments, in 1977, she received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from Gerald R. Ford.

During the winter Georgia became ill with a flu that was sweeping the country. She took a leave of absence from the teaching job and later resigned. It's possible that there was pressure from the community to encourage her resignation. One good reason was for what people called "radical views", which she had concerning the United States' entry into the war in Europe along with other rebel opinions that were shocking to the small Texas town.

By 1928 O'Keeffe began to feel the need to travel and to find other sources for painting. The demands of an annual show needed new material. Friends returning from the West with stories stimulated Georgia's desire to see and explore new places. Alfred had no desire to leave New York and Lake George...he hated change of any type.

During her summers, she studied and taught art at the University of Virginia, working with Alon Bement, who introduced her to the theories of Arthur Wesley Dow. Returning to New York in 1914, she enrolled at Columbia Teachers College to study under Dow, whom she later credited as the strongest influence on the development of her art.

In 1916, O'Keeffe's friend Anita Politzer showed some of these a

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Approximate Pages = 8 (250 words per page double spaced)