Continuing my series of posts on sources of Creative Inspiration, I am sharing images from a museum I’ve waited a lifetime time to visit – the Georgia O’Keeffee Museum.

After a 4-day quilt retreat in Vancouver, Washington October 25 – 29, I headed the following Thursday to Santa Fe, New Mexico (via Albuquerque, NM) for a 4-day trip to celebrate the “milestone” birthdays of 3 of my friends.

My friend L and I flew from Central Oregon to Albuquerque, NM, met up with our Seattle based friend W, rented a car and drove to Santa Fe, NM to eventually meet up with our Denver based friend M.

For most of us, except M, it was our first visit to Santa Fe, NM, a place rich in history, culture and ART!

In addition to exploring Santa Fe, we spent a morning at a place I’ve always wanted to visit – the Georgia O’Keeffee Museum.

Ultimately we would have loved to also visit Georgia O’Keeffe’s renown Ghost Ranch, where she lived in New Mexico and was inspired to paint her iconic animal skulls painting, but we did not have a long enough visit in New Mexico to fit that in (plus I have to save something for next time!)

I’ve loved Georgia O’Keeffe’s painting for many years. When I had my first apartment in college (with 3 roommates of course) one of the first posters I bought to decorate it was one of Georgia O’Keeffe’s iconic lily paintings.

At the museum, we watched an amazing short documentary about her life. Then it was time to immerse myself in creative inspiration as I wandered around the rooms of the museums, gazing at her painting and her amazing use of line and color.

Look at those color palettes!

On display at the museum they also had Georgia O’Keeffe’s paint box:

A lot of magic came out of this box!

In addition to the incredible paintings, they also had exhibits by some of O’Keeffe’s contemporary painters and exhibits of Black and White photographs of O’Keeffe such as the one below:

(and you know about my recent obsession with B&W photography – Life in B&W)

I was familiar with Georgia O’Keeffe’s general biography, but I did not know she spent time painting/living in Lake George, New York. That was very cool to discover this as I lived in Albany, NY from about age 16 – 23 (it is where I met Terry the Quilting Husband!) and I’ve been to Lake George, NY many times (Terry’s family even had a family reunion there years ago).

Naturally after wandering around the museum with my friends for quite some time (hours?) it was time to visit the museum gift shop! Here are some of the goodies I took home:

If you’ve followed my blog for a while you know about another one of my obsessions –  sunflowers (see my series of posts Sunflowers!), so imagine my delight to find these notecards that combine my love of sunflowers and my admiration for the work of Georgia O’Keeffe!

When I got home, I put on my inspiration board on my magnetic closet door panel in my studio, postcards from the gift shop. I want to make an art quilt in these palettes.

I have more photos to share from my Santa Fe, NM trip (including of course “Santa Fe in Black and White) in a future post (maybe two?).

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Postscript

More creative inspiration occurred on our road trip back to Albuquerque, NM to fly home. On the way to the airport, we took a detour to visit a colleague of L’s at an amazing horse ranch/equestrian center.

The detour road trip gave me an opportunity to see many amazing vistas of the New Mexico countrysides as we drove by, few of which I got to photograph as hanging your smart photo out a moving car is not the best idea. I did capture a little flavor of the general landscape:

You definitely had the flavor of being in the American Southwest.

The route also took us through the very quaint town of Madrid, New Mexico. which if you check out the link I’ve provided, you will see it is a “Ghost Town Reborn”. We stopped there for coffee and wandered around a bit. Here are a couple photos from that wandering: