Looking at Art

Georgia O'Keeffe spent two months in Peru in 1956, where she was awed by nature and painted this exquisite small watercolor of the Andes. She saturated the watercolor paper with pigments of blue and green and added the black that keeps the peaks grounded in the foreground. The gray that shrouds the mountains gives us a sense of a foggy terrain.

For O'Keeffe, the "actual" view is a point of departure. In this case, our eyes take us to dizzying altitudes and then beyond.

We sense comfort and perhaps a bit of terror in this abstracted landscape. It is an experience O'Keeffe was accustomed to feeling. Her decision in 1949 to move permanently from New York to a remote part of New Mexico to paint was made to disconnect herself from an urban context.

Spending a few minutes with this painting this summer could help you wander out of the heat and humidity of South Florida to the cool peaks of Peru.

This work by Georgia O' Keeffe is on view at the Naples Museum of Art through July.

-Mark Ormond