"A flower is relatively small. Everyone has many associations with a flower - the idea of flowers. You put out your hand to touch the flower — lean forward to smell it — maybe touch it with your lips almost without thinking — or give it to someone to please them. Still — in a way — nobody sees a flower — really — it is so small — we haven't time — and to see takes time, like to have a friend takes time.. .So I said to myself — I'll paint what I see — what the flower is to me but I'll paint it big and they will be surprised into taking time to look at it — I will make even busy New-Yorkers take time to see what I see of flowers.. .Well — I made you take time to look at what I saw and when you took time to really notice my flower, you hung all your own associations with flowers on my flower and you write about my flower as if I think and see what you think and see of the flower — and I don't."
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Presidential Medal of Freedom recipientsWomen academics from the United StatesPainters from the United StatesWomen from the United StatesPeople from Wisconsin
Original Language: English
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Sources
O'Keeffe's contribution (1939) to the exhibition catalogue of the show An American place (1944)
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Georgia_O'Keeffe
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