Black Iris III 1926

Georgia O'Keeffe made Black Iris III by layering oil paint to create something much bigger than a flower, an almost abstract sense of form. Look at how she’s built up the surface, thinly, with delicate gradations, so there’s this sensual feeling, a soft, almost imperceptible shift from light to shadow. It’s like she's coaxing these petal shapes into being through touch. There's a dark cleft at the heart of the flower, painted with such depth and intensity, that feels like a portal into the unknown. It's soft and velvety, and pulls you in. O’Keeffe's paintings of flowers really opened up how we see and experience them. Like Marsden Hartley who painted similar subjects around the same time, she gives us a sense of the infinite through a singular subject. It's a conversation about what we notice, and what we feel when we look.