Georgia O'Keeffe was born in 1887 in Sun Prairie, Wisconsin, a place of wide open space that she embraced. From an early age her family encouraged her interest and exploration in art.

"My first memory is of the brightness of light – light all around." Throughout her work O'Keeffe seems to have sought a oneness with nature that she symbolized by light.

O'Keeffe left Wisconsin at the age of fifteen to pursue her study of art in Chicago, New York and Virginia. "It was in the fall of 1915 that I first had the idea that what I had been taught was of little value to me except for the use of materials as a language... I decided I wasn't going to spend my life doing what had already been done."   . . .