Georgia O‘Keeffe, Black Mesa Landscape, New Mexico/Out Back of Marie’s II, 1930

Georgia O’Keeffe was “the ultimate intentional artist”, Ariel Plotek, curator of fine art at the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum, tells Holly Black in the new issue of Elephant. “It was apparent in everything she did, but we see it most in her command of colour… She relied on a core group of colours for most of her career, because she wanted to know exactly how they would behave.” O’Keeffe’s favoured shades included cerulean and cobalt blues, iron-based reds and browns, and viridian green, which she used to evoke the extraordinary New Mexican landscape she so adored. Get your hands on issue 45 to learn more about the tools and processes that enabled O’Keeffe to harness oil paint’s potential so meticulously.