When you think of Georgia O’Keeffe, your mind probably jumps straight to those massive, hyper-detailed oil paintings of flowers. You know the ones. They look like they’ve been zoomed in a thousand percent. They’re crisp, they’re bold, and they basically define American Modernism. But there is a whole other side to her work that’s honestly way more raw. It’s the period before the fame, before the skulls, and before the New York City skyscrapers.
It’s all about the water.
Between 1916 and 1918, while she was living in the middle of nowhere—specifically Canyon, Texas—O'Keeffe went through this incredible, reckless experimental phase. She wasn't using heavy canvases. She was using paper. Specifically, Georgia O'Keeffe watercolors from this era are some of the most radical things she ever produced, yet for a long time, they were treated like a footnote.
The Wild Texas Years
Texas was a trip for her. She was in her late 20s, teaching art at West Texas State Normal College. Imagine the Panhandle in 1916. It’s flat, it’s windy, and the light is unlike anything you’d see on the East Coast. O’Keeffe was obsessed. She would hike into Palo Duro Canyon, sometimes in the middle of the night, just to watch the sun come up.
She didn't want to paint what other people were painting. She was over the academic stuff. So, she started playing with watercolor.
She used cheap, student-grade paper. It sounds weird for a "master," right? But she loved it. She once told Alfred Stieglitz that a stack of this paper "almost a foot tall" made her feel "downright reckless." Because it was cheap, she didn't have to be precious about it. She could mess up. She could throw things away. That freedom led to some of her most famous early series, like the Evening Star and Light Coming on the Plains.
In these works, she wasn't trying to draw a "star" or a "plain." She was trying to paint the feeling of the light. It’s basically just giant, bleeding washes of color. Deep blues, burning oranges, and yellows that look like they’re vibrating. It was total abstraction before abstraction was even a "thing" in the U.S.
The Mystery of the "Canyon Suite"
Now, if you really want to get into the drama of Georgia O'Keeffe watercolors, you have to talk about the fakes. This is a story that still bugs art historians.
Back in the late 80s, shortly after O’Keeffe died, a group of 28 watercolors surfaced. They were called the "Canyon Suite." The story was that O'Keeffe had given them to a student named Ted Reid back in 1918 before she left Texas for New York. For decades, they supposedly sat in a garage, wrapped in brown paper.
The art world went nuts. The Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art in Kansas City even bought them for a cool $5 million.
But then, the Catalogue Raisonné (the official, definitive list of an artist's real work) was being put together in 1999. The experts started looking closer. They realized the paper used for these "1917" paintings hadn't even been manufactured until much later. Basically, the "Canyon Suite" was a bust. They were removed from the official record, and the museum had to get its money back. It’s a huge reminder that even the biggest experts can get fooled by the "vibe" of O’Keeffe’s early watercolors because they were so experimental and loose.
Why She Used Paper Instead of Canvas
A lot of people think she only did watercolors because she was a "starving artist" and couldn't afford oil. That’s partly true, but it’s mostly a myth. O'Keeffe was very deliberate.
Watercolor is fast. You can’t really "fix" it the way you can with oil. You have to be decisive. She liked that. She would work on the floor, leaning over the paper, using her whole arm to move the paint.
What made her technique different?
- The "Bleed": She would let colors run into each other on wet paper, creating those soft, hazy horizons.
- Notan: This is a Japanese concept of balancing dark and light. She studied under Arthur Wesley Dow, who taught her to see shapes as "masses" of light and dark rather than just objects.
- Minimalism: She’d leave huge parts of the paper white. In her world, the empty space was just as important as the paint.
Her Nude Series is a great example. These aren't anatomical drawings. They’re soft, curvy, almost liquid-looking shapes that barely look like bodies. They’re more like landscapes. Honestly, they’re some of the most intimate things she ever did, and they caused quite a stir when Stieglitz first showed them in New York.
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The Pivot to Oil
So, why did she stop? If the watercolors were so good, why did she move to the big flower paintings?
Basically, because people wouldn't shut up about her "femininity."
Critics in the 1920s saw her soft, bleeding watercolors and started writing all this flowery, psychoanalytical stuff about her "soul" and her "womanhood." It drove her crazy. She felt like her art was being reduced to her gender. To fight back, she started painting with extreme precision. She picked up oils and created sharp, hard edges. She wanted to prove she could be just as "tough" and "intellectual" as the male painters of her time.
But even in those famous oils, you can see the ghost of her watercolor days. The way she layers colors to create depth? That’s all watercolor technique.
Where Can You Actually See Them?
If you want to see the real deal, you can't just go to any museum. Because watercolor is so fragile—the light literally eats the pigment—they aren't on display all the time.
The Georgia O’Keeffe Museum in Santa Fe is the obvious go-to. They have the largest collection, but even they rotate them in and out of "dark storage" to keep the colors from fading. The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York and the Amon Carter Museum in Fort Worth also have some of the heavy hitters from the Texas years.
How to Appreciate These Works Today
If you're looking at a Georgia O’Keeffe watercolor and you're thinking, "I don't get it, it's just a blue smudge," try this:
Stop looking for a "thing." Don't look for a flower or a hill. Just look at how the color sits on the paper. O’Keeffe was trying to record a sensation. She was trying to capture the exact second the sun hits the horizon and turns everything a weird shade of violet.
Actionable Insights for Art Lovers:
- Check the Date: If you're looking at an O'Keeffe, check if it's from 1915-1918. That’s the "watercolor golden age" for her.
- Look at the Edges: See where the paint stops and the paper begins. She was a master of "lost and found" edges.
- Read her Letters: If you really want to understand the art, read her letters to Stieglitz from her time in Canyon. She describes the landscapes with so much passion it’s almost overwhelming.
- Support Paper Conservation: These works are literally disappearing. Supporting museums that focus on paper conservation ensures these won't be gone in 50 years.
O’Keeffe was way more than just the "flower lady." She was a rebel in a long skirt who wasn't afraid to get her hands dirty with cheap paint and messy paper. Those watercolors are where she found her voice. They’re the foundation for everything that came after.