Georgia O’Keeffe

Beauty in Potential

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This week I take the risk of sharing with you some things that are more personal. I try to do that regularly, but not often in the form of sharing my own visual work.

While as an art student in college I became fascinated with the shapes and colors of various seashells, largely through the help of a coffee table book containing high quality photos of them. The above is an example of a colored pencil study of one that I did a few years later.

More recently I became familiar with the paintings of William Dunlap of the Delta region of northwest Mississippi. To Dunlap I attribute the phrase, ‘hypothetical realism,’ words which I think well describe many of Georgia O’Keeffe’s paintings. I understand Dunlap’s phrase as referring to a desire to capture seen and known objects in a realistic way, but in imagined settings. I think the influence of Georgia O’Keeffe is evident above in my own willingness to superimpose the beautiful form and color of a shell upon an imagined seascape setting, without any shadows cast by the former upon the latter.

Notice, also above, how I am by temperament a water colorist… meaning that I am inclined to start with light tones before the dark, not only with traditional water colors and colored pencils, but even with with oils and acrylics (heresy admitted!).

Then, in 2021 and after about 35 years of neglect, I made what felt like a brave decision to attend an artist’s retreat at a nearby Benedictine Abbey, which has an art studio. I share below my effort to revisit an earlier love, expressing by it something of an unfulfilled potential. The painting is still unfinished, and this time I have approached the subject with acrylics.

Perhaps these days following the Epiphany, and our observance of the Baptism of our Lord, can be for us a time to appreciate gifts we have been given, whether of the physical and material kind we tend to associate with Christmas, or of the more spiritual kinds we may associate with the Epiphany. Both call for appreciation. But the form that appreciation takes in each case, as well as the timing with which it occurs, may well differ.

 

John Gaw Meem’s Churches

Cristo Rey Church, Santa Fe (exterior / front entrance)

 

John Gaw Meem, some of whose public works I featured last week, was the son of an Episcopal priest and professor who also served as a missionary in Brazil. When discerning his vocation as an architect, Meem was drawn to projects involving the design and construction of new churches as well as the preservation and renovation of historical examples. With his churches, he most clearly demonstrated his early commitment to Spanish Pueblo Revival architectural design. Numerous examples exist, but here I would like to focus on a few key projects that well represent his approach.

A memorable instance is his Cristo Rey (Roman Catholic) church (1940). The solid massive forms of the asymmetrical towers abutting the entrance portal contrast nicely with the detailed attention to pattern and ornament in the woodwork between them. This is evident both on the door as well as in the porch and the corbeled beam above it, which in turn supports the vigas (or exposed beam ends).

Cristo Rey Church, Santa Fe (interior)

The interior of the church is just as evocative, which provided a new context for an historic altar reredos of carved stone. Not only does this 20th century building complement the centuries older altarpiece, Meem’s attention to lighting is particularly effective. A skylight or window above helps illuminate the textured form of the stone carving, while also drawing attention to the area upon which the liturgy is focussed.

Below are two churches Meem designed for the wider region around Santa Fe and to the west of Albuquerque, at roughly the same time.

Saint Anne and Santo Tomas churches, thanks to Stanford Lehmberg’s, Churches for the Southwest

With these two examples, we see very similar features to what we find in Cristo Rey, albeit in more rural circumstances. Cristo Rey, and Santo Tomas in particular, display an homage to the exterior form of the historic church at Ranchos de Taos, NM (depicted immediately below), memorable from a painting by Georgia O’Keeffe and the photography of Ansel Adams.

San Francisco de Asís Mission Church, Taos, NM (late 18th century)

An especially notable and earliest example of Meem’s exploration of the the recovery of a Spanish Pueblo approach to church architecture is his Taylor Memorial Chapel, at La Floret, Colorado Springs (below).

First designed in 1929, the building incorporates a beautiful painted and sculptural reredos, as well as decorative tile surrounding the doorways, by Eugenie Shonnard. Despite some early-recognized construction issues related to the stucco used on the exterior, the chapel remains a well-used venue today as part of a conference and retreat center.

At about the same time as Meem’s project for Cristo Rey in Santa Fe, he was commissioned to design a new church for the First Presbyterian congregation of that same city. Once again showing his appreciation for the outward form of the Ranchos de Taos church, Meem produced a plan for a building that also remains in active use, with some renovations.

First Presbyterian Church, Santa Fe (exterior and interior views / 1939)

This congregation’s commission of Meem for their new building was as much a testament to Meem’s reputation as an architect as it was a marked preference for a prevailing local style increasingly adopted in the wider community. It is remarkable to see a Presbyterian Church within the Reformed tradition of Christianity adopt and be comfortable with worship in a church whose architecture is so obviously indebted to the aesthetics of 17th century and later Spanish Roman Catholic design, and so heavily influenced by regional pueblo architecture.

The Beauty of Intuition

 

Georgia O’Keeffe offers a compelling insight: “Artists and religionists are never far apart, they go to the sources of revelation for what they choose to experience and what they report is the degree of their experiences. Intellect wishes to arrange — intuition wishes to accept.”

“… intuition wishes to accept.” Whether we are considering the spiritual life or what we apprehend through art, our openness to what we might experience is the key to what we might accept. As O’Keeffe seems to suggest, we are not the source of revelation in either sphere of consciousness. We are the recipients of revelation in both realms. I think her second notable insight is to perceive the intrinsic connection between the two sources of what she calls revelation.

Medieval Christian mystics and writers had a similar insight about our experience of Creation, and our encounter with the Bible. They sometimes referred to the former as the Book of Nature and the latter as the Book of Scripture. The two ‘books’ have the same author, as well as overlapping content, even if differing in their redemptive significance. In ‘reading’ both, we are the recipients of beauty, goodness, and truth. By accepting what we apprehend through each source, our intuition is more broadly formed and informed.

Intuition is something of a cousin to prudence, justice, temperance, and fortitude. Like these natural virtues, first described by the ancient Greeks, intuition is a capacity or strength that we are born with. And like the four Greek virtues, intuition is not something we simply have, but an aspect of our consciousness that can be developed through exercise and practice.

Prayers, meditations and reflections, and even sermons are often ‘reports’ of spiritual growth, just as O’Keeffe’s beautiful paintings are communications of her own artistic experience. Parallel to the way that many of the Psalms attest to the beauty of God’s graceful handiwork, O’Keeffe’s paintings often display a spiritually lyrical quality. As she says, “artists and religionists are never far apart” – an appreciation that more and more Christian teachers and writers are reclaiming from earlier visionaries in our tradition.

The beauty of holiness. And  the holiness of beauty. Reflecting on these parallel experiences can help us be open to and appreciate Georgia O’Keefe’s insight about intuition.