Georgia O’Keeffe: Canyon with Crows and Other Watercolours

“I was alone and singularly free, working into my own, unknown—no one to satisfy but myself.“

(Georgia O’Keeffe)

Georgia O’Keeffe, Canyon with Crows, 1917, watercolour

A few posts ago I wrote about Georgia O’Keeffe’s watercolour “Morning Sky With Houses” (1916) and now I found myself in love with many more of O’Keeffe’s watercolours and I really want to share them with you all. “Canyon with Crows” is my second favourite these days, right after the “Morning Sky With Houses” because I cannot resists purple and orange together. In Georgia O’Keeffe’s vision the canyon is a groovy spectacle, a technicolor dream. In the background the pinks and blues are melting into purple, while the rich river of ruby red is paving its way through the fields of greens. Fields and patches of different colours and a canyon is created. Another wonderful detail here are the crows flying through the sky in a slightly ominous way, as if they warning us of an impending danger.

Georgia O’Keeffe arrived to Canyon, Texas in September 1916 to work as the head of the art department at the West Texas State Normal College. The vastness of the blue sky, the wildness of nature, the red sunsets and red soil, the hot winds blowing across the Texas prairie. The town of Canyon was named after the Palo Duro Canyon which means “hard wood”, referring to the juniper and mesquite trees that grow in that area. The wild, untamed nature of Texas proved to be very inspiring to O’Keeffe. The vibrant contrast between green foliage and red sandstone is stunning. Always adventurous, free and wild at heart, Georgia would spent many Saturdays hiking the risky steep and narrow paths of the canyon. The little town of Canyon with its structured pattern of streets and repetitive rows of houses was not something that O’Keeffe found particularly inspiring. In fact, she not only found it dull but also confusing. On one occassion she went out to mail a letter and she had trouble finding her way home because the streets looked so similar. Her love of wilderness and open spaces will be even more prominent later in life, especially when contrasted with Alfred Stieglitz’s love for the safety and predictability of urban spaces.

The watercolour “Red Mesa” is perhaps the most similar in theme and style to the “Canyon with Crows” but all of O’Keeffe’s watercolours painted in the short time period from 1916 to 1917 have that playfulness and vibrancy which I adore so much. O’Keeffe was particularly fascinated with sunrises. She loved the way the first rays of the sun would come into her room and paint it in soft vanilla yellow shades. Her watercolour “Sunrise” bellow is spectacular, painted in bright red and magenta pink shades. The colours look like they are melting into one another. While this watercolour isn’t realistic, the depiction of the intensity of the sunrise is realistic. Sunrises and sunsets are very strong in colour. Also, today is Georgia O’Keeffe’s birthday so why not enjoy her watercolours!

Georgia O’Keeffe, Canyon with Crows, 1917, watercolour, details

Georgia O’Keeffe, Sunrise, 1916

Georgia O’Keeffe, Pink And Blue Mountain, 1916, watercolour

Georgia O’Keeffe, Sunrise and Little Clouds No. II, 1916, watercolor on paper

Georgia O’Keeffe, Red Mesa, 1917, watercolour

Vincent van Gogh – Die in the Summertime

“Every time I stare into the sun
Trying to find a reason to go on
All I ever get is burned and blind…”

(Chris Cornell, Nearly Forgot My Broken Heart)

Vincent van Gogh, Wheatfield with Crows, July 1890

Exhausting heat of summerr day. Golden wheat against the electric blue sky. A crooked, brown path through the wheat that leads to nowhere. Crows flying aimlessy, low above the wheat field – without direction, without control. Their hoarse cawing disturbs the otherwise heavy silence in the field. No trace of wind. The sky is turning a darker shade of blue with each passing moment. This is not the tender, soft baby blue sky from a Monet painting. This is not a tame wheatfield. These wild, energetic, passionate brushstrokes are not for the faint of heart. Thick, quick, short strokes are a work of an artistic maniac who is led by emotions that arose from a soul as troubled and dark and deep as a waterwell. Dark clouds are pressing down down to the ground and it all feels dense and claustrophobic.

This very dramatic painting was painted on the 10th July 1890, and is, unfortunately, not the last painting Vincent van Gogh painted, although it is one of his best and one of his most emotionally raw. Vincent died on the 29th July 1890 and there is a tendency to see this painting as Vincent’s suicide note because of the obvious ominous, disturbed mood, and while I agree with that I think it also shows the very thing that Vincent strove to capture on his painting; all the life, energy and vibrancy that was inside him, despite the depression, in his own words: “What am I in the eyes of most people — a nonentity, an eccentric, or an unpleasant person — somebody who has no position in society and will never have; in short, the lowest of the low. All right, then — even if that were absolutely true, then I should one day like to show by my work what such an eccentric, such a nobody, has in his heart. (…) Though I am often in the depths of misery, there is still calmness, pure harmony and music inside me. I see paintings or drawings in the poorest cottages, in the dirtiest corners…”

This brooding wheatfield was a visual expression of a huge stream of feelings swelling up inside the artist; the feeling of enormous, incurable loneliness and immense sadness. It might be unusual to use yellow to portray sadness, but this is not the cheerful, harmless yellow we might find in a painting by Fragonard. The ripeness of the field may also symbolise the ripeness of the artist’s life and after ripeness comes either death or decay. The crows add to the ominous feeling of dread and the arrival of death, or the end. As is typical for the paintings he made in the summer of 1890, he used a double-canvas and this horizontally elongated canvas helps in creating the dramatic mood because the sky is pressing down to the field whereas in a vertically elongated painting the sky would have much more space to breathe and shine. It is also important to note that the unusual long form of a painting was typical for the Japanese Ukiyo-e prints which Vincent loved, admired and took inspiration from. This form was just one of the many ways in which he experimented with his art and used the Japanese influence. The final days of Vincent’s life were days of extreme sadness and extreme creativity and this painting, although not his last one, is the explosion of this creativity.

The title of the post comes from the Manic Street Preachers’ song “Die in the Summertime” from their third album “The Holy Bible” (1994):

“Scratch my leg with a rusty nail, sadly it heals
Colour my hair but the dye grows out
I can’t seem to stay a fixed ideal

Childhood pictures redeem, clean and so serene
See myself without ruining lines
Whole days throwing sticks into streams

I have crawled so far sideways
I recognise dim traces of creation
I want to die, die in the summertime, I want to die”