portrait of this blog's author - by Stephen Blackman 2008

Sunday, January 03, 2016

FRIDA KAHLO / GEORGIA O'KEEFE

 . . .  perhaps I might try and commit to an entry a day here?
Here's a little something for Frida Kahlo fans (like me!) . . . . . and Georgia O'Keefe fans too







Frida Kahlo’s personal letter comforting friend and colleague Georgia O’Keeffe after O’Keeffe suffered an apparent 'nervous breakdown' resulting in a condition so severe she was hospitalized and ultimately unable to paint for a year 

Georgia O'Keefe


"Leaving is not enough. You must stay gone. Train your heart like a dog. Change the locks even on the house he’s never visited. You lucky, lucky girl. You have an apartment just your size. A bathtub full of tea. A heart the size of Arizona, but not nearly so arid. Don’t wish away your cracked past, your crooked toes, your problems are papier mache puppets you made or bought because the vendor at the market was so compelling you just had to have them. You had to have him. And you did. And now you pull down the bridge between your houses, you make him call before he visits, you take a lover for granted, you take a lover who looks at you like maybe you are magic. Make the first bottle you consume in this place a relic. Place it on whatever altar you fashion… Don’t lose too much weight. Stupid girls are always trying to disappear as revenge. And you are not stupid. You loved a man with more hands than a parade of beggars, and here you stand. Heart like a four-poster bed. Heart like a canvas. Heart leaking something so strong they can smell it in the street."

– Frida Kahlo to Marty McConnell



Alfred Stieglitz - Georgia O’Keeffe, 1918

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