Almost anyone that knows anything about the art world has heard of Georgia O’Keeffe.  You know, the artist that painted the huge flowers and skull bones of animals scorching in the deserts of New Mexico.

But I take a certain sense of pride that my artist father, Arlen Burton, not only personally met Ms. O’Keeffe, but actually had the pleasure of sitting through a brief art lesson from her.

No, it didn’t cost him a fortune, he didn’t even realize he was going to meet her (or that she would give a short art lesson) the day he showed up to take his one-day-a-week art lesson from his tutor, Mr. Mead.

He always took his art lesson on Sunday afternoon, and I remember hearing him talking all excited to my mother when he got home after one of the sessions.  Out of curiosity, I went into the room and heard him say that he’d met Georgia O’Keeffe.  I was about fifteen years old at the time, so it must have been around 1959.

It turned out that my dad’s art instructor, Mr. Mead (Carlsbad, New Mexico), had known and become friends with Ms. O’Keeffe while he studied art in the 1930’s.  On the day of which I’m referring, she’d been invited to visit Mr. Mead and speak to his students.

At the time, I’d never heard of Georgia O’Keeffe, except my father kept saying she was world famous with pieces of art in the Metropolitan Museum.

I did know that if someone was really famous, they should be in the Encyclopaedia Britannica, so I decided to thumb through that massive source of information to see if she was indeed famous.  She was in the encyclopedia and I was impressed.  My dad really had met the famous artist that was living in the badlands of New Mexico, right along with the rest of us cowboys.