I knew I’d write a story about Georgia O’Keeffe after leaving New Mexico. In it, I expected to say I understood her better after traveling through “her” New Mexico. But, after a month, she is still as elusive as a ghost.

Previously, the extent of what I knew about O’Keeffe hung above the stairs of the Modern Wing at the Chicago Art Institute. “Sky Above Clouds IV” is a massive cloudscape. It’s eight feet high and twenty-four feet wide. She created it as a part of her airline passenger series. Scenes she saw from the window of airplanes.

It’s one of those artworks that you look at and immediately think, “That’s art? I could do that.” But then you stand there for a moment, trying to figure out what makes it art. The realization you come to that even though it’s simple, you couldn’t do it because you don’t see the world that way. She didn’t just look. She saw.

As a modern art lover, I’ve been aware of her work. The flowers didn’t interest me much – even though they were curious in their largeness. Maybe it was because she was American that I gave her less regard than I should have. I see now I’ve underestimated her. But I still don’t know Georgia.

In Santa Fe, the O’Keeffe Museum is the preeminent art museum, so I made an appointment and decided to learn about the woman I knew too little.

O’Keeffe was often called the “Mother of American modernism.” She favored landscape and still life and dead things. She collected rocks and bones and mountains. Her work skewed toward the abstract if it wasn’t realism.

She lived in New York City for years, but New Mexico called to her. Slowly, she spent more time there until she never left again. Not her body and certainly not her soul. Her ashes mix with the very mountains now.

There are places in New Mexico called “Georgia O’Keeffe’s,” she’s so connected with them. There are mountains she owns in spirit and one that she’s now part of.

In Abiquiu, New Mexico, there is a flat-topped mountain called Cerro Pedernal. She said it was her mountain and painted it frequently.

I went to Abiquiu and stood outside of Ghost Ranch, a place she frequented, lived, and loved. I stood where she must have stood so many times, painting that mountain.

I drove to her home and studio, now a museum, and I stood outside her beloved garden and turned around and around. I was looking for what she saw and recognizing so much of it. This is what she wanted us to see. There is so much beauty in her chosen isolation.

But what about the woman who came to New Mexico after her husband died and lived alone. By day she explored and painted. By night climbed her “ladder to the moon” and lay on her flat adobe roof. Alone with the mountains and stars.

What do we know about O’Keeffe?

We know what she wanted us to know. She was an avid traveler crossing the globe many times. A fierce feminist (though she shunned the title) and an unrelenting loner. Maybe for a while, she went crazy. She didn’t work at all, and then she did again. This is what the record shows.

I’ve spent the last month following in her footsteps. I looked out my window and stared at the Taos mountains for hours. I’ve climbed its peaks and marveled in their grandeur. Maybe for a while, I went a little crazy too.

Also, I’ve stood at the base of “her mountain” at Ghost Ranch. The O’Keeffe home in Abiquiu and at the museum. Surely these places must show all there is to know about her; still, she is elusive.

I’ve walked where she walked and stood where she stood and smelled the lilacs she must have smelled. I gasped at the red, red, red of the rocks and black mountains and white sand and bright sun and gleaming stars. I’ve wondered about a place called the Faraway, Nearby.

Still, I don’t know her any more than I did before about O’Keeffe. But I’ve seen what she wanted me to see. And that is enough—more than enough.

Read more stories about New Mexico here.

Read more about my New Mexico travels here.

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