Road - Mesa with Mist

Georgia O’Keeffe’s bedroom overlooked the road that connected her remote home in Abiquiu with the larger towns of Española and Santa Fe. “The road fascinates me with its ups and downs,” O’Keeffe said, “and finally its wide sweep as it speeds toward the wall of my hilltop to go past me.” Painted in 1961, Road—Mesa with Mist portrays a view of that road while revealing another facet of O’Keeffe’s ongoing fascination with the New Mexican landscape. Here the mesa painted with such severe clarity in Abiquiu Sand Hills and Mesa is shrouded in near obscurity, with only the curve of the road to indicate the location.

Credit: Bequest of Paul and Gabriella Rosenbaum