Georgia O'Keeffe: Lake George Autumn and Church Steeple
This paper analyzes two paintings by Georgia O'Keeffe: "Lake George Autumn" (1925) and "Church Steeple" (1950). Examining each work's medium, subject matter, content, and compositional elements, the paper explores how O'Keeffe translated her deep physical reactions to nature and architecture into abstract yet evocative imagery. Drawing on biographical scholarship by Sara Whitaker Peters and Lisa Mintz Messinger, the analysis also considers the sociopolitical dimensions of O'Keeffe's art, particularly her awareness of gender in the creative process and her rarely expressed but strongly held feminist beliefs.
- Introduction: O'Keeffe's Enduring Legacy: O'Keeffe's lasting artistic legacy introduced
- Lake George Autumn: Medium and Subject Matter: Medium, classification, and natural subject matter
- Lake George Autumn: Composition and Content: Color, flow, contrast, and compositional detail
- What O'Keeffe Communicated at Lake George: O'Keeffe's intentions and artistic development explored
- Church Steeple: Medium, Subject Matter, and Content: New Mexico church painting analyzed in depth
- Church Steeple: Sociopolitical Dimensions and Feminist Beliefs: Gender awareness and feminist views examined
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What makes this paper effective
- The paper uses a consistent analytical framework — medium, subject matter, content, and sociopolitical context — applied to each painting in turn, giving the analysis a clear and replicable structure.
- It grounds visual description in biographical and scholarly evidence, citing Peters and Messinger to support claims about O'Keeffe's intentions and development as an artist.
- The inclusion of O'Keeffe's own words, particularly her 1925 feminist debate statement, enriches the paper's engagement with gender and artistic identity beyond pure formal analysis.
Key academic technique demonstrated
The paper demonstrates formal visual analysis integrated with biographical contextualization. Rather than describing the paintings in isolation, the student connects compositional choices — such as color contrast, directional flow, and architectural proportion — to documented events and influences in O'Keeffe's life, showing how external context informs the reading of a work's meaning.
Structure breakdown
The paper opens with a brief introduction on O'Keeffe's significance, then divides into two major sections, one per painting. Each section follows the same analytical sequence: medium and classification, subject matter, visual content and composition, and sociopolitical themes. The paper closes by quoting O'Keeffe directly on feminism and artistic independence, providing an effective thematic conclusion. The parallel structure makes it easy to compare how O'Keeffe's approach evolved from her Lake George period to her New Mexico years.
Introduction: O'Keeffe's Enduring Legacy
Georgia O'Keeffe's artwork has always been of great interest to journalists, critics, and scholars. But her many paintings and drawings — from New Mexico, New York City, and Lake George in the Adirondacks — are her truly lasting treasures, not what people say about them. O'Keeffe's work has stirred the emotions and spirits of millions of people who know little or nothing about art, and the exquisiteness, originality, and timeless beauty of her paintings will endure for as long as there are people to see them.
"Where I was born and where and how I have lived is unimportant," she stated (Peters, 2001, 18). "It is what I have done with where I have been that should be of interest."
Lake George Autumn: Medium and Subject Matter
"Lake George Autumn" is one of those works that invites interest. It is a two-dimensional painting, oil on canvas — fine art, not applied art. It was meant as a visual experience to be enjoyed and to inspire; it was not designed to provide color or decoration to any utilitarian object such as a coffee cup or plate. This is a public work that O'Keeffe intended to be shared by the public. Although she was a very private person, and many of her works remain unavailable for public viewing to this day, this was a public piece.
It was completed in 1925 in the Adirondacks. It is an abstract view of Lake George, near the home of her husband, the renowned photographer Alfred Stieglitz. O'Keeffe concentrated on the natural world in the vast majority of her paintings and drawings — from the starkness of the New Mexico desert to the bold, bright colors of flowers to the Adirondacks. She loved to bring the natural world onto her canvas.
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