The Cliff Chimneys

Mountain
This square-top mountain is Cerro Pedernal, in northern New Mexico. Artist Georgia O’Keeffe painted it over twelve times, saying, “God told me if I painted it often enough I could have it.”

Abstraction and realism
This gray area of the painting seems flat—it’s nearly one solid color—yet also three-dimensional, with its lightly shaded edges. Georgia O’Keeffe was interested in moving between abstraction (non-representational art) and realism.

Pink color
O’Keeffe heightened the fleshy pink tones of the mountain from its more true-to-life brownish-pink color. This underlines her personal, human connection to the place.

As she once said of this landscape: “All the earth colors of the painter’s palette are out there in the many miles of badlands.”

Feelings
This mountain is a real place. Although the painting certainly resembles it, the flatter areas of paint and monumental quality make this not quite a realistic depiction of the location. In fact, O’Keeffe wanted to paint the feelings the mountain evoked in her, saying,

“I long ago came to the conclusion that even if I could put down accurately the thing that I saw and enjoyed, it would not give the observer the kind of feeling it gave me. I had to create an equivalent for what I felt about what I was looking at—not copy it.”

Resting place
Georgia O’Keeffe loved this location so much that she reportedly had her ashes scattered there when she died. She called it her “private mountain.”

Viewpoint
Our viewpoint is from the base of the mountain, looking up as it looms over us. In that way, even though this painting is relatively small, O’Keeffe made the mountain seem monumental.