Where She Kept Painting
O'Keeffe's New Mexico, for a painter friend
The ask
My closest friend paints watercolors, mostly landscapes, and was told last month she has macular degeneration. Her sight will go slowly from the center. She has always meant to see New Mexico. I'd like to send her and her husband while she can take it in. Around $8k.
The gift
Four nights in Santa Fe for two. The Georgia O'Keeffe Museum opens her Abiquiú home and studio to them alone for a private tour that ends with the views from her studio and bedroom. A morning walk at Ghost Ranch follows her paths to the places she painted, and we arrange a guided afternoon at Plaza Blanca, the white cliffs of the 1940s canvases. The card is closed with a blind-embossed seal.
Why it's extraordinary
Macular degeneration began taking O'Keeffe's central vision in 1971, in her eighties. She made her last unassisted oil in 1972, then went on in watercolor with assistants, the medium this friend paints in, and kept making work into her nineties.
The moment
She walks the red hills and the white cliffs, then stands in the studio where the painter kept working after the same diagnosis.
A curator replies within one business day.
