Georgia O'Keeffe Analysis

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Georgia O’Keeffe Georgia O’Keefe paints wispy curved shapes and her use of thin paint and clear colours evokes feelings of mystical silence. Her work is very different to certain aspects of Anna Keay’s work- abstract shapes based on line, colour, light and dark masses, repetition, and some symmetry. It is however smooth and soft like Renoir when he paints his people but hers is no way near as detailed. ‘Red Poppy’ Oil on canvas, 1927 This painting gives a profound impact, mainly because we never look at something so insignificant in such great detail, as it is a large and vivid, persimmon-red shape which shows an extreme close-up of a poppy. I think the original of this piece is supposed to be smaller, but the viewer still sees the flower in a huge perspective because the angle and position from which the painting was created makes the viewer feel like they are very close to the painting anyway. The entire composition is consumed by the poppy and the edges of some petals are actually cut off because the close up is so great. The intimacy almost forces the viewer to stop just to take in every detail. O’Keefe uses colour to impact her viewers such as the obvious contrast of the poppy on the white background which seems to make the flower jump out into the viewer’s space straight from the canvas. The background also has a fuzzy grey which occupies the edges of the focus on the flower. This links to an imitation of seeing a flower close-up. The vision would be blurred and congested around the fringe. She also uses a sophisticated method of shadowing which adds depth to the flowers petals. Instead of just shading the reds with shades of white and black to create tonal gradient, she uses carrot orange to perfect the petals adding three dimensional effects. The orange also adds texture because the tone is gradual which crafts the smooth effect of petals. The

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