This image shows a painting which is framed in a pigmented pastel pink panel that includes fragments of earth and rocks from the sites where the paintings were made. Here the painting directs the viewer to look down on a brightly colored still life in O’Keeffe’s studio at Ghost Ranch – a small jaw bone (possibly a coyote) and an animal skull, sitting on curvy pine plank shelf cut from a tree. The shelf, which is suspended from a metal bracket, is painted in horizonal swirls of brown, beige, purple, yellow, pinks and grays to create the sensation of the wood and knotty pine. The rendering of horizontal curvy wooden shelf and the skulls consume the picture plane creating a sense of flatness and three-dimensionality. The floor below, is painted in vertical and u-shaped lines of pastel brown, beige, peach, gray and blue to give the illusion of depth between the shelf and the floor. Gestural linear strokes and squiggles in pastel pinks, purples, grays, greens, yellows, blues, browns and cream create the dimensionality of form as well as casting highlights on the beautiful simplicity of this skull and jawbone. The top of the pine plank meets a section of the wall painted in pastel blues, grays, creams and peach colors.
This is an image that shows the side view of O'Keeffe's Skulls showing a screen printed ruler painted along the edge of the painting with a pink background and black numbers.

O’Keeffe’s Skulls

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

The droughts of the 1930s devastated both wild and domestic animals in New Mexico, littering the landscape with their bones. O’Keeffe collected the sun-bleached skulls, antlers, and jawbones of steers and local wildlife on her walks. Many of these bones—often interpreted as symbols of mortality—appeared in her paintings, eventually becoming synonymous with her aesthetic. Halvorson, who found the bones pictured here in O’Keeffe’s collection at Ghost Ranch, considers this painting a reflection on O’Keeffe’s legacy.