Pedernal—From the Ranch
Lesson Objective
Students will look at Georgia O’Keeffe’s work inspired by nature and her use of natural elements and color to frame her paintings. Students will reflect on the importance of perspective, specifically through her depiction of the Cerro Pedernal in New Mexico.
If you wish to replace or add creative writing, compare and contrast activities, and/or historical research to your lesson, scroll down to the Learning Extensions.
Georgia O’Keeffe, United States, 1887–1986. Pedernal—From the Ranch #1, 1956. Oil on canvas. Gift of Mr. and Mrs. John Cowles, 64.43.2, © Georgia O’Keeffe Museum / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
Introduction
Do you have a favorite place? What’s special about it? Is it a park where you spend summer days? Or maybe you like the view from a high hilltop. Perhaps you enjoy the hustle and bustle of the city. Or do you prefer being inside a quiet room?
For the painter of this picture, Georgia O’Keeffe, the rugged desert of New Mexico was the ideal place to be. She loved the vast terrain, the bright blue sky, and the intense, hot sun. She especially treasured the unusual mountain you see in the distance, the Cerro Pedernal.
“I’ve traveled all over the world,” O’Keeffe said, “and I don’t think there’s anything as good as this,” referring to the Cerro Pedernal.
O’Keeffe looked to the beauty of abstract forms in nature for inspiration for her paintings. Her highly individual style conveys a personal expression of her feeling for the environment and invites viewers to look at nature in new ways.
Warm-Up Questions
Take a moment to look at the painting.
- What do you see? What more can you find?
- How does this painting make you feel? What do you see that makes you say that?
- What questions do you have after looking at the painting?
- What do they think was the artist’s intent?
Background
Georgia O’Keeffe
Left: Arnold Newman, United States, 1918–2006. Georgia O’Keeffe, 1968. Gelatin silver print. Gift of First Banks, 87.35.62, © Arnold Newman Properties/Getty Images.
Right: In New Mexico, O’Keeffe spent most of her time in the village of Abiquiu, or at her nearby home Ghost Ranch.
Born in Sun Prairie, Wisconsin, O’Keeffe was interested in art at an early age and knew by the eighth grade that she would become an artist. Growing up in the Midwest shaped her artistic development. She attended the Art Institute of Chicago before moving to New York City to work as an artist.
O’Keeffe created more than 900 paintings and drawings in her lifetime and was honored with retrospectives (exhibitions that look back on an artist’s career) by major museums throughout the United States that honor her long and prolific career. She served as a role model for women artists at a time when men dominated the art world and remains a source of inspiration for many artists today.
In 1929, she made her first trip to New Mexico. In the years that followed, she spent several months a year in New Mexico, settling there permanently in 1946. O’Keeffe drew inspiration from the mountains and simplified and reduced their form in this painting. She eliminated details and varied textures to give greater emphasis to form and color. She didn’t hesitate to exaggerate the proportions of objects.
Living in the desert in an adobe house (a house made of natural materials), O’ Keeffe was fascinated by the landscape and the animal bones and skulls she collected on her walks. One day, as she held up an animal’s pelvic bone, she caught a glimpse of sky through the hole. That glimpse inspired her to paint this image: Pedernal—From the Ranch #1.
Technique
O’Keeffe was a pioneer of early American modernism. During the years when realism was popular in America, O’Keeffe experimented with abstraction, reducing forms in nature to broad areas of color and simplified forms. By experimenting with scale, such as by enlarging the bone, she forces the viewer to see images in new ways.
O’Keeffe was more interested in expressing her feelings for nature than simply describing it. Her experience of drawing while listening to music gave her the idea that line, color, and shape could express beauty. This private vision is the real subject of her work.
O’Keeffe liked to paint her subjects from unusual viewpoints and with unconventional proportions. She studied small flowers extremely close up and filled large canvases with the swirling petals of a single blossom. She depicted cityscapes as if she were on the ground looking up, so that the towering skyscrapers seem overwhelming. And she painted massive landforms but showed them far off in the distance, so they appeared small.
Georgia O’Keeffe, American, 1887–1986. City Night, 1926. Oil on canvas. Gift of funds from the Regis Corporation, Mr. and Mrs. W. John Driscoll, the Beim Foundation, the Larsen Fund, and by public subscription. 80.28. © Georgia O’Keeffe Museum / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. O’Keeffe painted skyscrapers while living in New York. She created a mysterious mood with the looming buildings
Depictions of Nature
Left: Georgia O’Keeffe, United States, 1887–1986. Pelvis with the Moon, New Mexico, 1943. Oil on canvas, Norton Museum of Art. © 2006 Georgia O’Keeffe Museum/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.
Right: Georgia O’Keeffe, United States, 1887–1986. Black Place I, 1945. Oil on canvas. Bequest of Mary Griggs Burke and gift of Eleanor Briggs, 2014.20. © Georgia O’Keeffe Museum / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.
O’Keeffe found inspiration in the smaller details of the terrain as well. Bones, rocks, and pieces of wood became subjects for her artwork. Bones, especially, intrigued her: she saw them as beautiful flowers of the desert and symbols of life. This idea so captivated her that she shipped large barrels of bones to her home in New York so she could continue to paint them even when she wasn’t in New Mexico.
Pedernal—From the Ranch
Steven Schroeder, *Pederna*l, New Mexico, 1999, digital photograph.
The Pedernal is a flat-topped mesa (an elevated piece of flat land) that lies southeast of O’Keeffe’s Ghost Ranch near Albuquerque, New Mexico. The mountains of New Mexico were among O’Keeffe’s favorite subjects to paint. The flat-topped Cerro Pedernal, a unique mesa near the town of Abiquiu, fascinated her.
Today, many people still call the Pedernal O’Keeffe’s Mountain. The artist has framed her view of the mesa with the curving shape of an animal’s pelvic bone. Like a film director, she focuses our vision through the shape of the bone to lend drama to the Pedernal, contrasting the simple silhouette of the mesa with the curve of the bone.
Left: Close up on the Pedernal.
Right: Close up of the colors and textured bone.
Consider how differently the mesa would appear without the framework of the bone. This telescopic view creates a sense of vast space and endless blue sky punctuated by the flat shape of the mesa. This painting may be viewed as the expression of O’Keeffe’s love of nature and as a tribute to the vastness of her beloved Southwest.
The colors O’Keeffe chose are also surprising. Here, most of the bone is a glowing reddish orange rather than the white we would expect. The mesa, in contrast, is a cool blue. O’Keeffe wasn’t interested in painting colors exactly as they look in nature. She wanted her work to give a sense of the Southwest, of blazing hot sun and clear blue skies.
Art Activity: Through the Looking Glass
Materials
- Paper
- Tape
- Drawing Materials
Guided Practice
Look closely at the painting, left to right and top to bottom. What do you see? If the bone was not in the painting, what else do you think you’d be able to see? What do you see that makes you say that? What do you think it’d feel like to be in this painting?
Instructions
Looking at the Perdernal—From the Ranch #1, we learned about the importance of perspective. In this activity, we can experiment with perspective and art making.
Make sure all students have one sheet of paper and a piece of tape. Roll the paper into a cylinder with a large enough diameter/thickness that the students can look through the paper cylinder with one eye, then make sure everyone tapes their new looking glass.
Have each student choose a specific object, landscape, or space in the room, without revealing to their classmates what they have chosen.
Then provide another blank sheet and drawing materials and ask that the students use their looking glass to single out a specific “frame” from the subject they have chosen. Have them draw a circle and inside what they can see through the paper looking glass.
After the students complete their first drawing, have them turn the page and draw the same subject again, but without the looking glass.
Have the class try to guess from the “framed” drawings what the original subject was. After the class has guessed, have the student who drew it turn the page and reveal the actual full picture.
Reflection
Compare the framed drawings to their full picture counterparts. What is different? How did the change in perspective influence the drawing and what it communicates? How can we connect this with Georgia O’Keeffe and her use of bones to frame landscapes?
Optional Art Extension
If time permits, have the students create a new drawing inspired by Georgia O’Keeffe’s love for the Pedernal. Have students think of their favorite place. Why is it meaningful to them? How does it make them feel?
Learning Extensions
Research and Discussion
“Georgia O’Keeffe served as a role model for women artists at a time when men dominated the art world.”
Spend time reflecting on this statement and then do some background research. How did O’Keeffe overcome the limitations within the artistic world for women and what made her success and recognition possible?
Reflect on the artists you know. How many of them are women? How many of them are men? How do you think equality looks today in the art world? Do research to back your thoughts. Think beyond the United States. How does this look in at least three other countries in the world?
Discuss in class the current meaning and significance of gender today. Compare it to O’Keeffe’s time. What’s changed? What’s still the same?
Research and Writing
The Pedernal O’Keeffe depicted is called Cerro Pedernal and is a narrow mesa in Rio Arriba County, in northern New Mexico. Look more into its history and importance. It’s been the inspiration to many other artists besides O’Keeffee.
Let’s think about it: Who has also depicted the Pedernal or mesa in their art? How do you think the spatial features of these landscapes influenced the art created around it? Write an essay on your findings. Try to think about the broader picture of this prompt—the relationship between natural features and art. How are these two interconnected? How do human characteristics and physical features influence each other?
Minnesota State Standards
Social Studies: Geography
K.3.17.1 Create a representation of a favorite place. Explain why it is important to them and how it makes them feel.
2.3.14.1 Ask and answer spatial questions about physical and human characteristics in the environment.
Social Studies: History
8.4.21.2 Describe how movements, political and social conditions, and new technologies have affected the lives of women in different parts of the world since 1950.
Geography
8.3.17.1 Ask and answer questions about how physical and human characteristics influence their sense of place and that of others.
Visual Arts
5.0.4.7.1 – 5.9.4.7.1 Respond: Analyze and construct interpretations of artistic work.
5.0.5.9.1-5.5.5.9.1 Connect: Integrate knowledge and personal experiences while responding to, creating, and presenting artistic work.
Reading
4.1.9.1 Collect information from a variety of sources in different formats on a topic of personal interest or academic focus.
Writing
4.2.5.1 Write to inform or explain, organizing and presenting ideas clearly, using precise, domain-specific vocabulary and a variety of text structures, and including an introduction and conclusion, building on skills from previous years.
4.2.7.2 Plan and conduct independent research using sources to build understanding of topic; evaluate perspective, credibility, and relevance of information, avoiding plagiarism, and share findings in writing.