This image shows a painting which is framed in a pigmented pastel robin-egg blue panel that includes fragments of earth and rocks from the sites where the paintings were made. The focus of the painting directs the viewer to look down on a scattered array of colorful rocks and stones, in various shapes and sizes, sitting on the dirt. Energetic short, curved, squiggly and linear brushstrokes in browns, reds, pinks, yellows, blues, greens, greys, white, creams and purples accentuate the curvature or angularity of the various stones and pebbles. There are 2 large gray and bluish stones occupying the upper left and upper right corners of the painting along with a large rounded yellowish-brown stone with pink and blue hash marks emerging from the lower right corner of the picture plane. Occupying the upper top of the painting is a circular collection of rounded, oblong shaped stones in shades of blue, green and gray. Adjacent to the large gray stone, in the center of the composition, are white, yellow, orange and red rocks with a singular grey striped potsherd. The bottom half of the painting is filled with multiple little clusters of colorful rocks and pebbles. The picture plane becomes a dynamic interplay of color, shapes, and form with the dirt and ground as the base.
This is an image that shows the side view of O'Keeffe's Rocks showing a screen printed ruler painted along the edge of the painting with a pink background and black numbers.

O’Keeffe’s Rocks

ArtistJosephine Halvorson
Year2019-20
Dimensions42 x 32 inches (106.7 x 81.3 cm)
MediumGouache, site material, and screen print on panels
CreditCourtesy of the artist and Sikkema Jenkins & Co., New York

O’Keeffe collected objects she found while walking around her New Mexico homes. Sometimes these items made their way into her paintings, such as the work that hangs nearby, or simply adorned her windowsills and bookshelves.

For Halvorson, these rocks evidence not only O’Keeffe collecting, but the region’s geological past. During her residency, Halvorson collected small amounts of earth and pebbles from the area surrounding the Ghost Ranch home, and incorporated these into the paintings’ colored surrounds.