Georgia O’Keeffe, the trailblazing, Chow Chow-loving, boss lady painter is my absolute hero. I grew up an only child in a 55+ community in rural Florida, surrounded by retirees. Old ladies were my earliest role models. A friend once laughed and said, “Ananda, the only heroes you ever mention are women in their 80s.” She was right. I swoon for old Kate Hepburn, quote old Bette Davis, binge watch old Maya Angelou, what a woman. Way out in front of all of them is Georgia: my kindred spirit, a published cookbook author, a ‘to hell with the world, I do what I want’ kind of artist. The movement she technically belonged to, Precisionism, barely even gets a page in the textbooks. But, in the broader space of early 20th-century art, she ruled. And she ruled in a man’s world. My daydreams are of me and Georgia shooting cans off fence posts in the desert, then having tea and cigarettes under the shade of a giant succulent and talking trash about ex-boyfriends.

(DEEP BREATH, heavy sigh)

I…hate her paintings.

My rules say I can’t love her work just because I love her. And I don’t. And believe me, I tried. So, relieved of her art historical credentials or any historical context, I have to say: No thanks, I’ll pass. (I love you, Georgia. I’m so sorry.)

Georgia’s paintings are technically historic, visually digestible but emotionally they are on the menu for status, not taste. They belong in the canon, I just don’t want them in my mouth. No thanks, I’ll pass.

Her endless labyrinths of soft color washes move me about as much as mushy grapes drowning in Miracle Whip. The lack of emotional and structural convictions is underwhelming, bland.  Everything simply dissolves like it’s embarrassed to exist.

The feeling I get from her paintings evokes the sensation of being beaten to death with a high thread count, Egyptian cotton, eiderdown pillow…bored to death. Her color palettes are inspired, but so diluted they hang in vague forms like ghosts of a vibration they once possessed. 

Give me one graphic shape, clean and solid. Something decisive. Give me a bowl to contain the never ending procession of  near-watercolor haze. Give me clean flavors! When depicting structure, I get intangible fog. Give me texture and succulence! When depicting atmosphere, I get imprisoned washes. The paintings smell like chance, not decision.

Hit me like you mean it!