Georgia O'Keeffe: Of Art & Food
From easel to table, the American modernist was ahead of her time, not only in her art, but in her devotion to healthy cooking and eating from her Abiquiú, NM garden
“I am riding up the Rio Grande Valley at about seventy-two or so an hour. The landscape is very fine with the low autumn sun and I ought to be thinking about painting, but my adventures with food make me think I must write a book on cooking.”
—Georgia O’Keeffe
I recent returned from the ultimate Georgia O’Keeffe immersion experience in northern New Mexico: a visit to the museum devoted to her and an O’Keeffe-inspired cooking class in Santa Fe, a visit to the home where she lived in picturesque Abiquiú, and finally to her summer/fall residence in Ghost Ranch. Here’s the story.
I don’t recall when I first became fascinated by the artist Georgia O’Keeffe. Most likely it was in my Aunt Gerda’s living room paging through her many art and photography books and coming upon O’Keeffe’s remarkable giant flower paintings or her skulls in the desert landscape, stark and unforgettable.
I’m sure my aunt, a passionate and talented photographer herself, also had a book of photographs by avant-garde photographer and gallerist Alfred Stieglitz, including some of the more than 350 pictures he took of O’Keeffe, who became his muse, lover and wife, and whose early work he showed in his gallery and exhibited annually until his death in 1946.
On several sojourns in northern New Mexico, I visited the excellent Georgia O’Keeffe Museum in Santa Fe, and my interest in the art and the woman who made it increased. I wondered how a girl born on a farm in Wisconsin in the late 19th century became a spirited and groundbreaking 20th century artist living on her own in two adobe houses in New Mexico, tooling about in a Model A Ford with a mobile studio. (I found some clues in reading about her on the museum website here.)
O’Keeffe was already a famous and successful artist living with Steiglitz in New York and known for her pictures of New York skyscrapers and the colorful and sometimes controversial flower closeups when she accepted an invitation from Mabel Dodge Luhan, a wealthy writer and arts patron, to visit her in Taos in northern New Mexico in 1929.
It was a return of sorts for O’Keeffe, who had first glimpsed “the deep canyons and forested mountains of the New Mexico tableland in 1917, en route to Colorado,” wrote Britta Benke in her book about the artist, Georgia O’Keeffe: Flowers in the Desert. ‘I loved it immediately,’ she later recalled. ‘From then on, I was always on my way back.’”
The painter was enthralled with the landscape, architecture, color, light, the mix of cultures and the freedom she felt in this wide-open Southwestern space to pursue a new direction in her art. She returned every summer after that visit to Luhan in 1929, settling in the state permanently in 1949 at the age of 61.
Garden to table
On our trip to New Mexico, I was excited to revisit the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum, of which I never tire, but I was also surprised to learn that O’Keeffe was quite a health and wellness devotee when it came to food and that much of what she ate was grown in the garden at her home in Abiquiú, a tiny town of just over 200 about an hour northwest of Santa Fe.
I learned more of this in a class at the Santa Fe School of Cooking, which we followed a couple of days later by taking a delightful though rather abbreviated tour of the artist’s home in Abiquiú, including a visit to her kitchen and pantry, preserved pretty much as she left them in 1984. This house and the one at nearby Ghost Ranch that unfortunately is not open to the public are both set amidst a stunning landscape that inspired many of O’Keeffe’s most memorable paintings.
Cooking Inspired by Georgia
At the cooking school, Margaret Wood shared anecdotes about what it was like to be a companion to “Miss O’Keeffe” (as she was called by almost everyone) for five years beginning in 1977 when Wood was 24 and the artist was 90 and suffering from macular degeneration, though she continued painting for several more years.
Wood read to us from the cookbook that she had written, A Painter’s Kitchen: Recipes from the Kitchen of Georgia O’Keeffe, first published in 1991, five years after the artist’s death at the age of 98, and reprinted in 2009. It turned out that O’Keeffe, despite her best intentions or maybe because of her reservations (see quote at the top), hadn’t gotten around to writing her own cookbook!1
When Wood first interviewed for the job of companion, O’Keeffe asked her if she liked to cook. Wood said she did.
“Well, let’s see what you can do,” O’Keeffe said.
Preparing meals for her employer would be an important part of her job, and at first it didn’t go so well.
Wood prepared what she called “hippie health food”—brown rice, sautéed vegetables and chicken. O’Keeffe was not impressed.
“My dear, let me show you how I like my food,” she said.
Then they went into O’Keeffe’s extensive garden at her home in Abiquiú, the one that was an important reason why the painter had bought, carefully restored and expanded the historic adobe home in the first place. The garden was the source of most of the herbs, vegetables and fruits that populated her menu, the flowers that filled the vases (and that she sometimes painted or worked into recipes), and the cookbook that Wood wrote that came from her memories of what she had prepared for O’Keeffe and how.
“I remember how she guided me through the large Abiquiú garden, telling me where all the vegetables, fruits, and herbs could be found. She spoke with pride about her organic produce: the two-pound tomato that was grown the previous summer, the tree that bore the best applesauce apples, the hardy raspberries that survived one spring when all the other fruit froze.”
When Wood came to work for O’Keeffe, it was August, and the garden was in full bloom, with chiles, multiple varieties of lettuces and many vegetables ripe for harvest, she said. Much of what was grown in the garden was dried, frozen or canned for use in winter. The staff purchased what couldn’t be grown—grain to be stone-ground to make whole wheat flour for the homemade bread, eggs and local honey acquired from neighbors, high-quality meats from trusted sources.
“Miss O’Keeffe often wondered aloud, ‘Do you think other people eat as well as we do?’” Wood wrote in her introduction.
And yet many of her recipes were as simple as this one for spinach:
But the headnotes from Wood show the precision the artist expected:
“‘Wash the spinach with the leaves down, stems up,’ Miss O’Keeffe would say. She had many precise guidelines for food preparation. When mixing ingredients, she explained, ‘Dig down and lift.’ To scrape out a pan, she instructed, ‘Scrape with the edge of the spoon, not the tip.’ She had an ability to describe precisely the manner in which her food should be prepared, as well as the taste and texture that she desired.”
It was clear that precision and simplicity extended to everything that Georgia O’Keeffe ate, did, wore or created, from her food to her clothing—simple lines and usually black or white—to the brushes and colors she used for her painting to the decor of her homes. Among these was midcentury furniture from pioneer mid-century modern designers Charles and Ray Eames, with whom she was friends.
It took about nine months until O’Keeffe accepted that Wood had replaced her previous companion Mary to whom she had been very close, but “over time, with patience and a lot of doing a lot of what she wanted in the way she wanted it, we became friends,” Wood said.
As for the cookbook, I’m really enjoying the simplicity of the recipes and the memories of “Miss O’Keeffe” that Wood shares. Some dishes and ingredients do remind me of hippie food I ate when I lived in the Haight-Ashbury in San Francisco in the ‘70s—like brewer’s yeast, wheat germ, homemade yogurt and wholegrain bread. And yet there’s charm and truthfulness in simplicity—and O’Keeffe clearly knew that.
What we ate
At the Santa Fe School of Cooking, the menu included five recipes “inspired by Georgia O’Keeffe” from Wood’s book, including Watercress Salad with Herb Dressing, Corn Soup, Baked Chicken with Lemon, Fried Potatoes and Norwegian Apple Cake with Rum Sauce.
As it was a demonstration class, we mostly salivated and laughed as the chef, Mica Chavez, walked us through the recipes, offering tidbits of wisdom from her many years of cheffing, including stints cooking for Presidents George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, Al Gore and Vicente Fox of Mexico.
She began by making the apple pie cake because, she said, “I always start with dessert first.”
When we finally ate, the food was delicious and the company of other Georgia O’Keeffe fans and foodies made it a lot of fun.
I hope to recreate the meal soon. Meanwhile, here’s a PDF link to four of the five recipes.
As I too love dessert, I will share the Norwegian Apple Pie Cake recipe in a future post after I test it at home. I did make the O’Keeffe/Wood recipe for minestrone soup, and we enjoyed it, though it wasn’t as perky and colorful as the bowl made from the fresh vegetables of late summer that is featured in the cookbook.
Last but not least…
Along with me on this trip was my husband and travel buddy, Jefferson Graham, who put together a great PhotowalksTV episode of our visit to Abiquiú, Ghost Ranch and more. Please check it out:
And speaking of Georgia O’Keeffe, one inspiration for this post is another from my friend and fellow Substacker Jolene Handy of Time Travel Kitchen, who wrote about the artist, the cookbook, a special exhibit of O’Keeffe’s New York skyscrapers and a creamy carrot soup a few months back. Here’s the link.
The popularity of Georgia O’Keeffe has only grown over the years. Her art has sold for record prices—and her independent spirit and gorgeous art inspires people, particularly women. The museum is always packed—we’ve visited several times and it seems there are more folks there every time we go. Construction is going on a block away on a new and larger museum slated to open in 2027. We were told it will include an Abiquiú-style garden!
The O’Keeffe Abiquiú Home & Studio Tour is only open seasonally, from March to November, but you can sign up here to be notified when 2025 tours resume. Museum tickets are available year-round but do sometimes sell out. You can book up to 60 days in advance. Check out options here.
Given that the holidays are coming up and you may be looking for gifts, you might also want to check out the museum’s excellent gift shop too (link here). I came away with a calendar and some cards and later returned to buy a book. I noticed that at least three people walked out sporting black Georgia O’Keeffe hats on their heads!
Another great site for foodies, especially those with a yen for Southwestern goods and gifts—including classes— is the Santa Fe School of Cooking Marketplace. I dare not look at it!
And that’s a wrap!
Thanks for being here, for pressing that little valentine that says you like this post, for subscribing, commenting and sharing with others. A lot of my heart goes into what I do, so I hope you’ll tell your friends—and let me know what you think. Are you a G.O’K fan?
See you soon!
Ruth
Although she didn’t write a cookbook, O’Keeffe did leave a box of recipe cards dated from the 1950’s to the ‘70s that now reside at the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale University. You can learn more about the gift in this New Yorker article: https://www.newyorker.com/culture/kitchen-notes/cooking-from-georgia-okeeffes-recipes
I was lucky enough to snag a ticket for the Georgia O'Keeffe Museum when I was in Santa Fe a few years ago for a writing weekend. I wish I’d known about the cooking school - thank you for sharing your recipes from that experience. She was an amazing artist and I so admire her independent spirit.
What a terrific in-depth article on Georgia O'Keeffe, the museum and her homes in Abiquiú and Ghost Ranch. Accompanied with wonderful photographs and Jefferson Graham's video, you have provided an excellent overview of a spectacular trip to Northern New Mexico, focusing on "Miss O'Keeffe." If I may, here are two slight edits. (a) O'Keeffe's first visit to New Mexico was in 1917 by train returning from Colorado, including an overnight stay in Santa Fe. While experiencing Santa Fe, she reportedly stated "that from that moment, she knew she was always coming back." (b) Also, the new Georgia O'Keeffe Museum is currently scheduled to open in 2027.