So pretty much every Georgia O’Keeffe painting makes you feel like you’re being gently cradled in the womb of Mother Nature...

...but this one is especially giney, despite the fact that O’Keeffe completely denies all allegations of sexual undertones. Personally I don’t know how you could see anything but lady parts when looking at this “waterfall.” The painting was highly praised in its New York reviews, but the critics were onto O’Keeffe and commented that this and another painting of the waterfall had a “curiously fresh and virginal look.” Some A+ beating around the bush there.

O’Keeffe did several different painting of this particular waterfall and twenty altogether of Hawaiian landscapes. She began this artistic tangent when the Hawaiian Pineapple Company, Ltd. (later known as Dole Company) had invited her to come to Hawaii and create two paintings that they could use to advertise the Territory of Hawaii (it wasn’t a state yet).  Obviously O’Keeffe did a marvelous job, as Hawaii is now one of the tourist-iest places on the planet along with Disneyland and Las Vegas. Anyways, O’Keeffe was toured around by Patricia Jennings, the plantation manager’s 12-year-old daughter, who later wrote a book about the experience. Though O’Keeffe was an infamously difficult woman, she and Patricia formed a very sweet and very close bond over the ten days that they spent together.

She spent nine weeks altogether exploring the different islands and painting sexually charged versions of what she saw, taking photographs and sending letters back home, documenting her entire experience. Though O’Keeffe is one of the world’s most famous artists, her visit to Hawaii came at a time when she was hard up for new ideas and her marriage to Alfred Stieglitz was beginning to rock. But some island time (and perhaps a brief affair with the plantation manager) sent her straight back to the top.

It’s a shame that this painting along with O’Keeffe’s other Hawaii paintings are so little known amongst her more popular works, because they are perhaps the most badass of them all. Waterfall vagina > skull and flower vaginas. That's just good science.