Book description
The time is 1887. From any window in Georgia O'Keeffe's Sun Prairie,
Wisconsin birthplace home she only saw the Wisconsin prairie with its
traces of roads veering around the flat marshlands and a vast sky that
lifted her soul. At twelve years of age Georgia had a defining moment
when she declared, “I want to be an artist.” Years later from her
east-facing window in Canyon, Texas she observed the Texas Panhandle sky
with its focus points on the plains and a great canyon of earth history
colors streaking across the flat land. Georgia's love of the vast,
colorful prairie, plains and sky again gave definition to her life when
she discovered Ghost Ranch north of Abiquiu, New Mexico. She fell prey
to its charms which were not long removed from the echoes of the “Wild
West.” These views of prairie, plains and sky became Georgia's muses as
she embarked on her step-by-step path with her role models--Alon Bement,
Arthur Jerome Dow and Wassily Kandinsky. In this two-part biography of
which this is Part I covering the period 1887-1945, Nancy Hopkins Reily
“walks the Sun Prairie Land,” as if in Georgia's day as a prologue to
her family's friendship with Georgia in the 1940s and 1950s. Reily
chronicles Georgia's defining days within the arenas of landscape,
culture, people and the history surrounding each, a discourse level that
Georgia would easily recognize. NANCY HOPKINS REILY was a classic
outdoor color portraitist for more than twenty years and has taught
portrait workshops at Angelina College in Lufkin, Texas where she had a
one-woman show of her portraits. Her advance studies included an
invitational workshop with Ansel Adams. Reily graduated from Southern
Methodist University and lives in Lufkin, Texas. She is also the author
of “Classic Outdoor Color Portraits” and “Joseph Imhof, Artist of the
Pueblos,” both from Sunstone Press.
