Page 5 - CHANGING Winter 2018

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My favorite techniques are watercolor and oil pastels because I don’t have to draw. Learning how to paint has helped me realize that I want to be good at art. My favorite thing about art is that it’s very peaceful. Being in art class has helped me learn how to concentrate better. When you see a picture and you want to reproduce it, you have to trust your eyes and go with what you see. It just
creates this whole world of peacefulness and clam for me. My favorite techniques are definitely oil pastels or paint.
Fatima Ndiaye – New World High School
One thing that really stood out to me was the different techniques used to tea paint. One of my favorite hobbies is painting, so learning new techniques like that helps me to become a better artist.
Daniel Guerrero – MS 244
The life of Georgia o’Keeffe
Georgia O’ Keeffe was born on November 15, 1887. She expressed interest in becoming an artist from a young age, and grew up to study art at the Art Institute of Chicago. Her mother picked up on this interest and arranged for O’Keeffe to take lessons from a local artist. She studied under John Vanderpoel, who was well-known as one of America’s biggest authorities on figure drawing. She was at the top of her class, but she suddenly came down with typhoid fever, causing her to leave for a year to recover. When she was better, she joined the Art Students League in New York City to continue her art classes, learning about realist art techniques and visiting several galleries to expand her horizons. However, after a year, O’Keeffe moved back to Virginia to find her mother ill and her father out of work. She couldn’t afford to study in New York any longer, so she went to work as a commercial artist for two years. Later on, she met and studied under Alon Bement, a founder of the Maryland Institute of Art.
Under his tutelage, O’Keeffe began to break from her established focus on realism and experiment with abstract art. O’Keeffe also took the time to teach art at public schools and was Bement’s teaching assistant for a period of time. When O’Keeffe’s drawings caught the attention of photographer and art dealer Alfred Stieglitz, he displayed 10 of her paintings in his art gallery, 291, without letting her know. She confronted him when she found out, but let him continue to show her artwork and he later hosted her own solo show at the gallery. O’Keeffe moved to New York, with Stieglitz providing her with money and a place to live so she could focus on her art. Despite Stieglitz being married at the time, the two eventually fell in love and were married after Stieglitz’s divorce. During the modern art phenomenon that boomed afterwards, O’Keeffe was once again inspired to change her artistic focus, now experimenting with different perspective pieces, drawing mundane things in large focus. She also started making paintings of New York skyscrapers. By 1927, O’Keeffe had become one of America’s
most important and successful artists. O’Keeffe traveled to New Mexico in the summer of 1929. Inspired by the landscapes and Navajo culture, she returned there multiple times to paint during her summers and later bought a house in Ghost Ranch, a retreat and education center close to the village of Abiquiu. On July 13, 1946, O’Keeffe’s husband suffered a fatal stroke and died at 82. Three years after, O’Keeffe moved to New Mexico permanently. She was also elected to the National Institute of Art and Letters during the same year. From that point on, O’Keeffe sought new inspirations for her artwork and began traveling the world, visiting places such as Hong Kong, India, Japan, and Singapore. As she grew older, she suffered deteriorating eyesight and finally painted her last original painting in 1972, though she continued to make new pieces with help from assistants. O’Keeffe still received much recognition in her old age, even getting the Medal of Freedom from President Gerald Ford. She died in 1986, with The Georgia O’Keeffe Museum being constructed in New Mexico to honor her memory.
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