ABSTRACT Title of Dissertation / Thesis: “LIVING ON PAPER ...

While most of the girls went no further than the genteel decorative art of china painting,
O’Keeffe stood out as an accomplished fine artist. A classmate remembered that in the
art studio, “Georgia was queen. We were amazed at what she could do. . . . Our eyes
would widen in admiration to see Georgia take a pencil and draw a picture of a girl that
was as like her as a photograph. . . . Georgia was the life of the studio as well as the
queen. Her easel always stood in the center of the floor and was the high spot of
interest.” 49
O’Keeffe basked in such admiration for her art. Drawing and watercolor brought
her the joys of accomplishment. Recognition and practice combined to bolster her
confidence in the very skills she would use later to establish herself as a modern artist.
The mature artist looked at her childhood still lifes and commented, “I must have painted
a great deal with watercolor by that time or I wouldn’t have had the freedom I had with
that big sheet of white paper and the big brush I used. . . . I slapped my paint about quite
a bit and didn’t care where it spilled.” 50
In watercolors of fruit and flowers, O’Keeffe’s
broad, deft brushwork left behind the self-conscious tightness of her Sacred Heart
Academy still life drawings (Figs. 2.18-19). At Chatham she grew accustomed to
working in front of an audience led by a teacher who would praise rather than embarrass
her. O’Keeffe was gaining the assurance she needed to explore and experiment in her
“public” drawings and watercolors as she had previously done only in more “private”
creations. The artist would retain this confidence in watercolor twelve years later when
she chose it as her first color medium for modernism.
At home in the summer of 1904, O’Keeffe performed for her admiring family
circle by drawing pencil portraits of her brothers and sisters. In the careful profile
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