Answer:rt is one of my favorite subjects because I enjoy expressing what is on my mind with pictures and color. Georgia O'Keeffe was an artist but not a certain kind of artist. She was her own kind of artist. Joan Didion wrote this essay to make the readers understand to be their own person and to pursue their own ideas. Anyone can draw a flower but not everyone sees the flower the same. O'Keeffe once said, " Where I was born and where and how I lived is unimportant. It is what I have done and with where I have been that should be of interest." What she means by this is that what is interesting is what she has done with where she has been. What matters is her art.
Didion took her daughter to the Chicago Art Institute one day and that was the day her and her daughter saw that the glory in Georgia O'Keeffe's work reflected a glory in its maker. This basically means that the painting was the painter and every choice made in the artwork was made alone, by the thoughts of just one person. It showed character and "Style is character.", says Didion. O'Keeffee's ability to show her style through her paintings gave Didion the ability to sort of translate who she is as a person. O;Keefee's paintings and her judgment toward the words people use about her paintings is how she profiles the artist. She descries the artist "...Simply hard, a straight shooter, a women clean of received wisdom and open to what she sees. This is a women who could early on dismiss most of her contemporaries as "dreamy," and would later single out one she liked as "a very poor painter". Didon sees O'Keeffe as strong and free to speak her mind which was a very hard personality to have back in that time of men power.
Throughout O'Keeffe's life she has been told what to draw by "the men". The men tell her that her art is impossible but she proves them wrong. Didion repeats O’Keeffe’s words, “I made you take time to look at what I saw and when you took time to really notice my flower you hung all your associations with flowers on my flower and you write about my flower as if I think and see what you think and see — and I don’t”. O’Keeffe words shows the defiance and boldness she has despite the thoughts that others have on her. She doe not care what other people think and that is a hard lesson to give to readers. People care so much about what others think because it hurts to be judged but O'Keeffe's personality can spark a change in someone's life and that is why Didion is using her as an example to portray that lesson. Didion explains O'Keeffe's past starting out as an artist with being often criticized and rejected. People would paint over her art which is probably what gave her a “hard shell”.
What is being portrayed in this essay is that art is meant to express yourself. Do not paint certain tings because it is what people want. Paint your style because people can read your character just by looking at your paintings. That is what Didion did to O'Keeffe. She was able to figure out what type of person O'Keeffe was just by reading and look at the paintings. She lived in a time where men dominated over women and despite all of the difficulties, she still lived her life blissfully painting and expressing her own feelings and thoughts.
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