Black Hills with Cedar 

Editor: This is a really captivating oil painting, "Black Hills with Cedar" by Georgia O'Keeffe. I'm immediately struck by how O'Keeffe uses these soft, almost fleshy colours to depict the harshness of the landscape, it almost feels like she is feminizing the landscape. What is your take? Curator: A pertinent observation. What commands my attention, however, is the interplay of forms and textures. Consider how the stark linearity of the cedar contrasts with the undulating, almost yielding surfaces of the hills themselves. Note that there appears to be very little perspective in the composition and how the various layers within it serve to compress the elements into a flattened plane. Where might this flattening of perspective lead us in our understanding of the artist's vision? Editor: Well, without traditional perspective, the distinction between foreground and background becomes blurry, almost dreamlike...is it trying to convey something beyond pure representation? Curator: Precisely. One might argue the work seeks not to mirror nature, but to convey an emotion via abstract geometric structure and color contrasts. Look at how the near-monochromatic top of the image interacts with the vibrant bottom and tell me where that takes your thinking. Editor: It does bring more emphasis to the cedar...a spot of vibrant life within this more stark landscape, as if acting as a focal point...almost anchoring the composition together? I see it now. Thanks! Curator: You have intuited well. Focusing our vision and perception skills on shape, colour and structure can often prove to be more insightful than searching for external historical significance when decoding works such as these.