This image shows a painting which is framed in a pigmented pastel pinkish beige panel that includes fragments of earth and rocks from the sites where the paintings were made. The painting draws the viewer downward into a closeup of view of the circular rings of a red fir stump as if it were a cracked sundial. The top of the stump consumes the picture frame with its flatness and multiple fissures percolating through the concentric surface. There is a large cavernous split down the center of the desiccated wood. The creation of a three-dimensional stump is articulated with a vertical curved painted band at the bottom of the painting to represent the side of the stump. All of the fissures are painted as little short cleaves and cracks, like hack marks in the surface, in a color range from dark browns, beige browns, beige pinks, greens, yellows and occasional blue marks.
This is an image that shows the side view of O'Keeffe's Tree Stump showing a screen printed ruler painted along the edge of the painting with a pink background and black numbers.

O’Keeffe’s Tree Stump

ArtistJosephine Halvorson
Year2019-20
Dimensions42 x 32 inches (106.7 x 81.3 cm)
MediumGouache, site material, and screen print on panels
CreditPrivate Collection

O’Keeffe’s home at Ghost Ranch has several red fir stumps under the portal, used by her and her guests to sit in the shade overlooking the Pedernal mountain in the distance.

More than just a means of telling its age, of tracking the passage of time, the rings of the tree in this case recall a favorite motif of O’Keeffe’s: the spiral featured, for instance, in O’Keeffe’s painting A Piece of Wood.

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Georgia O’Keeffe. A Piece of Wood I, 1942. Oil on canvas, 24 x 20 inches. Georgia O’Keeffe Museum. Gift of The Burnett Foundation. © Georgia O’Keeffe Museum View on Collections Online.