Georgia O’Keeffe (1887-1986)
“I like to get up when the dawn comes,” O’Keeffe told an interviewer in 1966. “The dogs start talking to me and I like to make a fire and maybe some tea and then sit in bed and watch the sun come up. The morning is the best time, there are no people around. My pleasant disposition likes the world with nobody in it.” Living in the New Mexico desert, which she made her permanent home from 1949 until her death, O’Keeffe had no trouble finding the solitude that she craved. Most days she took a half-hour walk in the early morning, keeping an eye out for rattlesnakes on her property, which she would kill with her walking stick (she kept their rattles in a box to show to visitors.) Then there would be breakfast at 7:00, prepared by O’Keeffe’s cook–a typical meal included hot chili with garlic oil, soft-boiled or scrambled eggs, bread with a savory jam, sliced fresh fruit, and coffee or tea. If she was painting, O’Keeffe would then work in her studio for the rest of the day, breaking at noon for lunch. If she wasn’t painting, she would work in the garden, do housework, answer letters, and receive visitors. But the painting days were the best days, O’Keeffe said:
On the other days one is hurrying through the other things one imagines one has to do to keep one’s life going. You get the garden planted. You get the roof fixed. You take the dog to the vet. You spend a day with a friend…. You may even enjoy doing such things…. But always you are hurrying through these things with a certain amount of aggravation so that you can get at the paintings again because that is the high spot–in a way it is what you do all the other things for…. The painting is like a thread that runs through all the reasons for all the other things that make one’s life.
O’Keeffe’s last meal of the day was a light supper at 4:30 in the afternoon–she ate early in order to leave plenty of time for an evening drive through her beloved countryside. “When I think of death,” she once said, “I only regret that I will not be able to see this beautiful country anymore.”
* Source: Daily Rituals by Mason Currey