Long before the phrase New West entered the art-historical lexicon, Georgia O’Keeffe redefined how the American West could be seen, felt, and understood. Through a radically modern lens, she transformed deserts, flowers, bones, and vast skies into symbols of emotional and spiritual presence. O'Keeffe ushered Modernism into Western subject matter decades before it became a recognized movement.
Today, O’Keeffe stands not only as one of the most influential American artists of the 20th century, but as the Mother of the New West. She is the foundational figure who proved that Western themes could be both deeply regional and unmistakably modern.
Bringing Modernism West
At a time when Western art was largely defined by realism, illustration, and frontier romanticism, O’Keeffe introduced abstraction, scale, and formal experimentation. Her early engagement with Modernism, shaped by European avant-garde ideas and American abstraction, set her apart from her contemporaries.
Rather than depicting the West as a narrative or historical space, O’Keeffe distilled it into form, color, and sensation. Mesas became planes of color. Skulls became sculptural objects. Flowers became monumental landscapes in themselves. This shift, from storytelling to essence, would become a defining principle of what we now recognize as the New West.
Her move to New Mexico in 1929 marked a turning point not just in her career, but in American art. The desert was no longer peripheral; it became central. And it was seen through a modernist vocabulary that forever changed how artists approached Western subject matter.
Flowers as Abstraction, Nature as Power
O’Keeffe’s flower paintings are among the most iconic works in American art history, not because they are decorative, but because they are transformative. By magnifying flowers beyond their natural scale, she removed them from botanical illustration and placed them squarely within abstraction.
These works challenged viewers to slow down, to look closely, and to experience nature as an emotional force. In doing so, O’Keeffe created a visual language that continues to resonate with contemporary artists exploring nature, identity, and place.
Flowers, for O’Keeffe, were never merely flowers. They were vehicles for modern perception, an approach that continues to inform how New West artists reinterpret the natural world today.
Blooming West: Honoring a Legacy
Our upcoming group exhibition, Blooming West, is an homage to Georgia O’Keeffe’s enduring influence and a contemporary exploration of how her ideas continue to bloom across the New West.
Each participating artist has been invited to create their own interpretation of the flower motif, using it as O’Keeffe once did: a gateway into modern form, personal symbolism, and Western identity.
Participating artists include:
Billy Schenck
Father of Western Pop, Schenck's iconic paint-by-numbers approach captures Western stories suspended in a Pop Art visual style. For Blooming West, Schenck depicts a cowboy meeting his end after claiming he hated flowers. Schenck's signature irony depicting the fate of his character, "Cliff", creates a foil to the show's celebration of flowers, honoring O’Keeffe’s wit, resolve, and refusal to sentimentalize her subjects.
Ben Steele
Taking a more literal approach to the inspiration of the show, Steele recreates O'Keeffe's famous painting, Jimson Weed, in pixels. Steele is referencing the common sexualization of her florals, an interpretation that was encouraged by her husband/gallerist Alfred Stieglitz. Though O'Keeffe would routinely reject this explanation, she could not escape it throughout her career. Steele honors O'Keeffe's most recognizable work in her oeuvre while referencing Stieglitz's storytelling.
Dennis Ziemienski
Honoring the focus of Western topics, Ziemienski draws us in to a desert icon: the cactus flower. These ephemeral blooms appear overnight and disappear as fast as they came. Ziemienski freezes this bloom in time so we may appreciate its rich hues and dramatic structure, exactly the impetus of O'Keeffe's floral portraits. Ziemienski and O'Keeffe invite us to slow down and examine the beauty of our Earth's smaller inhabitants.
These artists are joined by Bradford Overton, Duke Beardsley, Robert Moore, Fritz Scholder, Maura Allen, and Whitney Gardener in the show.
A Living Lineage
Blooming West is not about imitation. It is about lineage.
By revisiting the flower, a subject O’Keeffe transformed into a modern icon, this exhibition highlights how the New West continues to evolve. These works reflect the same spirit of innovation that defined O’Keeffe’s career: a willingness to challenge expectations, to push form, and to see the West not as a fixed idea, but as a living, expanding vision.
More than a century after she first began painting, Georgia O’Keeffe’s influence still blooms. Rooted in the desert, reaching toward the future.
In honoring her as the Mother of the New West, Blooming West celebrates not only where this movement began, but where it continues to grow.