I was only vaguely familiar with Georgia O’Keeffe’s artwork before reading this book, her reputation standing out largely in my mind as the artist who painted genitalia-like florals. Well. In this book O’Keeffe quickly and staunchly refutes her infamy and brings her own words to bear on her lifetime of work. She claims in the introduction that “no one else can know how [her] paintings happen,” and while each piece may be interpreted in the eye of the individual beholder (tinged by their own preconceptions and experiences), hearing O’Keeffe speak words alongside her brushstrokes is a valuable experience. Beginning with O’Keeffe’s childhood, the book grounds itself in her earliest memories and experiences before traipsing eloquently into her discovery of art at school and then her artworks themselves. Her language is sparse, but evokes a certain lightly pictorial quality that pairs well with the abstracted but somehow realistic paintings; rarely does she explore meanings outright, but describes instead the circumstances in which the painting was created, the multiple editions before the “finished” piece, and her journey through life, which seem to gather the artworks into a travelling diary of her time in New York, Canada, New Mexico, and elsewhere. I was almost shocked as I turned the pages of the book to uncover increasingly impactful pieces steeped in lucious colours, granular textures, and evocative compositions that were far more than the “vagina flowers” that seem to dominate the popular cultural references to her work. In fact, by the time I reached the florals partway through the narrative, I was well convinced that these weren’t even her best work. Sure, the flowers are gorgeous, and I can see how her macro-abstractions would have been a visual shock to the traditional detailed (and overly feminine) Victorian, Romantic, or even Impressionist florals of earlier decades, but her other work is easily as appealing. Combined with the stories of each locale that she painted into gorgeous abstraction, her journey through the American landscape seems far more impressive. ( )