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Throughout her life, O’Keeffe depicted the landscape configurations of wherever she was, as if doing so put her in closer touch with the identity of a particular place.

No place made as big an impression on O’Keeffe as New Mexico did. In early summer 1929, O’Keeffe traveled from New York to northern New Mexico, having first seen the area in 1917, when she returned to Texas from a vacation in Colorado. As she later explained: “When I got to New Mexico that was mine. As soon as I saw it that was my country. I’d never seen anything like it before, but it fitted to me exactly. It’s something that’s in the air, it’s different. The sky is different, the wind is different. I shouldn’t say too much about it because other people may be interested and I don’t want them interested.” (In Perry Miller Adato, Georgia O’Keeffe, film.)