Blue Sea with Rocks

Georgia O’Keeffe had a special talent for defining the essential character of a place. Throughout her life, she was attracted to places that represented extremes—the man-made canyons in New York City and the desert landscapes of the Southwest. In the 1920s she made several summer visits to York Beach, Maine, finding refuge from the heat and hustle of New York. Blue Sea with Rocks is from her third season there, in 1922. At first glance the composition reads as a flat image—perhaps pure abstraction. Then the flatness shifts and becomes infinite depth as we note the white streak marking the horizon. Colors catch our attention—greens in the water and brown, green, and lavender in the rocks. The deep blue of the open ocean fades to lighter tones in the shallow cove. The brown face of the upper rock reveals that the light comes from over the artist’s right shoulder. Abstraction, which earlier in O’Keeffe’s career had been a pure pursuit, has given way to a portrait of a bright summer afternoon.