O'Keeffe's New Mexico home a shrine to her fans

Her dining tables were shabby chic, made of plywood and saw horses. She was deep into green living and organic farming. She appreciated natural light and had giant windows installed in her 300-year-old home.

She liked simple things and quirky things. (A friend sent her a rattlesnake skeleton. She had it set in a case and laid into the adobe seating area in her living room.) She liked to be alone, and her furniture is a testament: Adobe couches and mod chairs don't invite anyone to linger.

But the weeping tourists don't see those things. Maybe they don't need to. Perhaps standing in her courtyard is enough for them.

From there, they see the sky as she saw it — deeper and wider and bluer than anywhere in the world.

From there, they see an animal skull with long and curly horns that O'Keeffe painted and was pictured beneath. From there, they see she had a fondness for bonsai, and she manicured a shrub in the center of the plazuela in the way of the Asian art. From there, they see the door that drew her to the house in the first place, the door she said took her more than a decade to own for herself.

And it's from that courtyard that you can feel it: This is O'Keeffe's turf. You'll see what she wants you to see, the way she wants you to see it.

O'Keeffe is renowned for being the first famous female landscape painter, a fact that University of New Mexico associate professor Kirsten Buick attributes to time spent in the Land of Enchantment.

"Her legacy in terms of art is directly related to the refuge she found in New Mexico," Buick says. "Away from New York. Away from what she called the city men, as well as the regionalists. She was able to carve out a space for herself here unlike any other woman."

O'Keeffe's Ghost Ranch and Abiquiu homes became her muses.

Buick explained to me why O'Keeffe's womanhood, her brush strokes, her business sense, all played into building her legacy.

"It (landscape painting) is normally the province of people who owned the land, and that was normally white males," Buick says.

"You do have examples of African-American landscape painters, but before Georgia O'Keeffe, there were no women represented. And that's directly tied to New Mexico; it becomes this alternative space for her to really try out something that was male-dominated."

Landscapes, just behind the Constitution, are where Buick says America finds its identity.

"I make sure my students understand her legacy in landscape painting," says Buick, whose specialty at UNM is in American art.

O'Keeffe had painted the deep red rocks to the west of her Ghost Ranch house. She hiked among the shrubs and cliffs and snakes for better vantage points. She wanted to present New Mexico, wide open and colorful.