Imagery which evokes a sense of place from objects, sounds or thoughts discovered there
A scavenger by nature, Georgia O’Keeffe throughout her life gathered physical objects, natural
souvenirs of place; river-washed stones, shells from Atlantic beaches, feathers and leaves from
all over, and, most famously, bleached bones from the New Mexican desert. She once
commented: “When I leave the landscape it seems I am going to work with these funny things
that I now think feel so much like it”. Elsewhere she explained that her natural souvenirs provided
equivalents (or substitutions) for the experience of place; “I have used these things to say what is
to me the wideness and wonder of the world as I live in it”. Her ‘Red and Orange Streak’
recalls the dark emptiness of night on the Texas plains, with only the scarlet line of daybreak
suggesting the distant flat horizon. O’Keeffe later explained that the design was inspired by the
sounds of the panhandle; the jagged arc across this nocturnal landscape was inspired by the
sounds of cattle country, where lowing of animals was always on the air.
(034) Georgia O’Keeffe 1919 Orange and Red Streak
