Georgia's Life, A Brief Hand-written Biography

Georgia's Life
by Ana

Ages 3+


Highlighting a few facts about the artist Georgia O'Keeffe's life, the author has presented a wonderfully simplistic, easy to read and colorfully illustrated book.

The first page sparingly informs us the year Georgia was born and the year she died, with a colorful rainbow background, making it more of a celebration of Georgia's life.

Compared to some of her other works which were put together rather quickly and casually, this book by the young author clearly appears to have been a labor of love.

And, being privy to inside information, I know that the author-illustrator studied at least half a dozen picture books on Georgia, absorbing not just the facts, but the artwork in those books as well before she set out to write and illustrate this book.

The first few pages of illustrations are original and charming, complementing the text well.  The later pages certainly seem to have been strongly influenced by Georgia herself or other artists who had similar style, possibly in the books she read for research.

My favorite page? Well, hard to choose, but, possibly the page where Georgia declares she is going to be an artist. Something about the little girl holding a picture - a picture of a flower nonetheless, flower for which Georgia was famous - spoke to me.

And, the author's favorite page? The one where we read, "Georgia also painted shapes and colors from her mind." Why is it her favorite? Because the illustration just came to her in a flash of inspiration: use shapes (like squares and rectangles) to create a picture, but, not an abstract picture - but a definite dog.

I was a bit disappointed that this book was so short. I would have liked to see another half a dozen pages at least, in the same vein.

Anyway, without further ado, here are the pages from this short but wonderful book, starting with the cover, all the way down to bibliography.