Georgia O'Keeffe was born on a farm in Wisconsin in 1887. When she was 12 years old, she knew she wanted to be an artist. She looked out her window when she was little and drew whatever she saw. The farm where she grew up was a great place to learn about nature. She was always feeling and tasting things. She even tasted dirt! Georgia's mom insisted that her daughter take art lessons. She did so good, they told her to go to art college. By the time she was 16, she had private art lessons at different schools in Wisconsin and Virginia.

    In 1905, she moved to Chicago to go to Art school. She drew statues in the museum. She studied at different art schools and colleges all over the country. At one school, in New York City, she won a prize for her painting of a rabbit and a copper pot. She painted one still-life painting every day in New York. She loved New York City and always visited a gallery where there were many paintings. The owner of the gallery was a famous photographer named Alfred Stieglitz.

    Drawn to the western landscape, O'Keeffe began spending summers painting in New Mexico at age 41. Her work became even more abstract and she started the skull paintings about this time. The Museum of Modern Art gave O'Keeffe a retrospective exhibit, their first for a women artist, in 1946, the year Stieglitz died. O'Keeffe thereafter led a reclusive life at her ranch in New Mexico, but continued paining until her death at age 98. She is among the greatest and most original painters of the twentieth century.

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