Route 66, Georgia O’Keeffe, and Creative Intuition

Last month, my family and I traveled along the western part of Route 66 for Spring Break. One of the gifts of our trip was how it re-energized me and my creativity.

Sometimes stepping away from routine creates space for new ideas to emerge. For me, one of those moments happened while visiting the Georgia O'Keeffe Museum in Santa Fe.

I have admired Georgia O’Keeffe’s work for years, but I realized during the visit that I didn’t actually know much about her life or how she thought about her paintings. One part that especially surprised me was learning how strongly she rejected the sexual interpretations that became attached to her flower paintings.

Like many people, I had always assumed the enlarged flowers were intentionally symbolic; that they acted as an invitation to think about femininity or sexuality.

But O’Keeffe repeatedly denied that interpretation. She insisted she was simply painting, in detail, what she saw: shape, color, scale, light, form. When I look at those paintings, the symbolism feels obvious. I have been culturally conditioned to see it. And yet the artist herself claimed otherwise.

The experience made me think about my own work and the strange relationship between conscious intention and whatever emerges from the unconscious during the creative process.

Most of the time when I begin a painting, I genuinely do not know what the final piece will become. I may know the colors I want to explore. I may know the kinds of marks I want to make. I may have loose themes in mind, like energy, nature, movement, Reiki symbols, emotion. But I rarely enter a painting with a fully formed message or image already planned.

Years ago, I painted a sunflower commission for a friend of my mother-in-law’s. While working on it, I instinctively used deep oranges and reds in the petals, much more than I normally would have at the time. I wasn’t referencing a specific flower. I simply followed what felt right while painting.

Then about a year later, we planted giant sunflower seeds with the girls just to watch them grow. The sunflower became enormous — taller than all of us — and when we returned home from vacation that July, it had finally bloomed.

The colors were familiar and uncanny.

The flower had the same fiery orange and red variations I had painted long before seeing it in real life. I remember pulling up a photograph of the painting and comparing it side-by-side with the actual bloom because the resemblance startled me so much.

I’ve experienced similar uncanniness in other paintings too.

One early mountain painting I created in 2020 resurfaced in my mind years later while hiking in India with my mother-in-law. At the top of the trail, the ridges and layered mountain shapes reminded me so strongly of the painting that I later placed the images beside each other when I got home.

The colors were different and the details weren’t exact. But the structure and the feeling of the landscape was familiar.

I don’t fully understand how intuition works in art. Probably none of us do.

Sometimes it feels less like inventing something and more like uncovering something that was already waiting there beneath the surface.

I believe artists can consciously explain what they intended to say with a piece. I also think creative work often carries meanings that exist beyond conscious planning. The mind may direct the brush, but the unconscious is still present in the room.

Maybe that’s part of why art resonates differently with each person who encounters it.

O’Keeffe may have been painting flowers exactly as she saw them. But what emerged through her intense observation and focus carried meanings larger than intention alone.

Seeing her work in person also deepened another growing curiosity of mine: oil painting. O’Keeffe worked extensively in oils, and standing close enough to study the texture, blending, and layering of her surfaces made me want to learn the medium more seriously myself.

Somewhere along Route 66, desert landscapes, museum walls, and long hours away from normal life, I found a creative rest and reset.

March Studio Update: Photography, New Work, and Building Momentum as an Artist

March felt like a month of behind-the-scenes progress.

Not everything was visible or finished. But a lot moved forward.

Investing in the Process

One of the biggest shifts this month was finally upgrading some of my tools.

I added an L-bracket to my camera setup, which has already made shooting vertically so much easier. It’s a small change, but one that removes friction, and I’m starting to realize how much small barriers were slowing me down.

The bigger investment was a new MacBook Pro.

It’s been over a decade—closer to fifteen years—since I last upgraded my laptop. Over time, I had just adapted to things being slow: Lightroom lagging, Wix struggling to load, constant delays in editing and uploading.

And while I told myself it was manageable, it was costing me something more valuable: time and creative energy.

Now there is less waiting, less frustration, and more space to create.

Returning to Photography

I also spent one Sunday revisiting my sketchbooks by photographing recent work and even pieces from the past year.

This is part of a broader commitment I’m making: using weekends not just to paint, but to document and practice photography. 

Right now, my indoor settings are starting to feel consistent:

• Aperture around f/5.6

• ISO between 200–400 (320 feels like a sweet spot)

• Slower shutter speeds (often between 1/15–1/30)

  
  

There’s still more to refine, especially around lighting, but I’m beginning to trust my eye.

Work in Progress (Everywhere)

Like nature, but in the studio, March was about seeding. 

• A commission for a friend is underway

• Three new paper pieces are in progress, with a developing theme I’m still feeling into

• And a completely new direction: a sculptural piece

  
  

The sculptural work is especially different for me. I started it experimentally using leftover gesso and layering spray paint in cerulean blue. It began to resemble waves, and now I’m exploring what it wants to become.

Do the waves face the shore? Or stretch toward the horizon?

Right now, I’m leaning toward the horizon.

I’m also questioning color and whether to keep the bold blue or move toward something more neutral. Either way, it’s a departure from my usual work, and that feels novel. 

Expanding the Foundation

This month also included some meaningful milestones:

• Launching my Chakra Fine Art Print Series

• Framing Bloom Under Pressure and establishing a relationship with a new local framer

• Updating listings and continuing to build out my shop

Looking Ahead

I will be on vacation for part of April, driving Route 66 with my family from Oklahoma City to Santa Monica. It’s my first chance to disconnect in a long time, and my first chance outside of work and the daily grind to practice presence with myself, Tristan and my girls. 

When I return, I will continue to:

• Paint more consistently

• Document more of the process

  
  

The goal is to create monthly recaps that feel progressive and relatable, something that captures beauty in imperfection, movement, texture, and energy.

Are We Becoming the Ones Who Give Fire?

I want to capture an idea before I lose it.

This post started as a voice memo during a recent commute. It crosses mythology, technology, and imagination.

Recently, I’ve been reading (and listening to) Mythos by Stephen Fry, and I came across the story of Prometheus and Zeus.

Prometheus gives humans fire: knowledge, power, possibility. And, like anything involving the Greek gods, there are consequences.

But this idea of knowledge as both a gift and a risk isn’t limited to Greek mythology.

We see it again in the story of God, Eve, and Lucifer. It’s the same pattern: the transfer of knowledge, the tension between creation and control, the cost of awareness…maybe even consciousness itself.

I’ve been fascinated by these stories since I was a kid. They seem to stick around.

Right now, it feels like we may be standing in a similar kind of moment.

Are We About to Give Fire?

With the rise of AI, we’re approaching an inflection point.

AI does not have general consciousness. Not yet. And we don’t know if it ever will. But the question keeps coming up:

Are we about to give AI its version of fire?

If we do, what happens next?

Every myth carries the same underlying truth. Knowledge is never neutral. It expands what’s possible, but it also introduces risk, responsibility, and unintended consequences.

Dimensional Thinking

There's another layer to this.

We exist as three-dimensional beings. We create, live, and reproduce within those boundaries.

But what if we were created by something beyond them?

What if a four-dimensional intelligence, something we can’t fully perceive, was responsible for us? Would that be what we’ve always called “God”?

And now, in a strange kind of mirroring, we are creating something fundamentally different from ourselves.

AI may eventually exist in physical form, like robots or other interfaces. But it doesn’t originate the way we do. It doesn’t reproduce biologically in three dimensions. It evolves differently, more like a system expanding through code and networks.

So what happens if it becomes aware?

Would it see us as its creators? Its gods? Would it become the first form of consciousness that doesn’t belong to our physical experience?

Maybe what we’re experiencing right now isn’t unprecedented. Maybe it’s another unfolding.

Part of this line of thinking was sparked by Death's End by Liu Cixin. The novel, part of one of the most ambitious science fiction trilogies ever written, explores the idea of higher dimensions collapsing into lower ones and fundamentally altering reality.

It’s a compelling way to think about our own limitations. Our three-dimensional experience may only be a fraction of what exists. And it brings me back to a question:

As we develop AI, are we interacting with something that could eventually operate outside, or alongside, the dimensions we understand?

Creative Exploration

This is something I want to continue to explore visually.

I come back to:

• Myth

• Symbols

• Cycles

• Expansion

  
  

I feel deeply connected to nature, beauty, and growth in my work. There’s also a growing pull toward something more conceptual. Revisiting ancient stories through a modern lens.

Yours in creativity,

Maria