Darkness and Light in the Land of Enchantment: The Art and Friendship of Cady Wells and Georgia O’Keeffe

Georgia O’Keefe wrote for the catalogue cover of Cady Wells first New York City exhibition, in 1944, “I’m glad that you are showing Cady’s paintings at the same time that Stieglitz is showing mine, because I think we are the two best painters working in our part of the country.” These two artists, whose lives intersected in dramatic and complex ways during the 1930s and 40s, lived and painted within similar landscape parameters of northern New Mexico. Each was deeply devoted to certain markers—O’Keeffe, to the Pedernal of Abiquiu; Wells to the Barrancas of Pojaoque. Both created powerfully expressive landscapes that they rendered in paintings whose emotional tones, color, form, and meanings could not have been more diametrically opposed.