Lifetime TV movie premieres Saturday, Sept. 19 at 9 pm ET/PT *** 3 Stars
Gabrielle Pantera interviews Georgia O’Keeffe stars Joan Allen and Jeremy Irons

Joan Allen as Georgia O'Keeffe

“Georgia O’Keeffe bridled at the sexual connotation that [her husband] Steiglitz gave her paintings, but it served her well in becoming known and in the sale of her work,” says star and executive producer Joan Allen. “I see big flowers.”

Jeremy Irons stars as O’Keeffe’s husband, photographer and New York art gallery owner, Alfred Steiglitz. “She stayed with him,” says Irons. “So there must have been something. I was fascinated by him because he was such a pain in the ass. It’s interesting why people stay with people. What keeps men and women together is often not the obvious.”

Allen had to learn to paint oils and to charcoal sketch for her role in the Lifetime TV movie Georgia O’Keeffe. “I took painting classes, not many, because the film came together pretty quickly,” says Allen. “I went to the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn. I took a few painting classes. I got to see how to stretch a canvas to prepare to paint. On the days that I was painting, we had a painting consultant who’s very familiar with O’Keefe’s style.”

“When you take a flower in your hand and really look at it, it’s your world for the moment,” said American artist Georgia O’Keeffe (1887-1986). “I want to give that world to someone else. Most people in the city rush around so, they have no time to look at a flower. I want them to see it whether they want to or not.”

The producers get permission to shoot at Georgia O’Keeffe’s home the Ghost Ranch in Abiquiu, New Mexico. The paintings in the film are from the New York Georgia O’Keeffe Museum, after more than three years of negotiation between Maurer, Witlin and Allen with the museum and O’Keeffe expert Barbara Buhler Lynes.

“Four years ago Alix [executive producer Alixandre Witlin] and I took our 7-month-old daughter to her first museum, the Georgia O’Keefe Museum in Santa Fe,” says Georgia O’Keeffe executive producer Joshua D. Maurer. “We were overwhelmed by the story and the art. I said this would make a great movie. Alex said, ‘Who’d play O’Keeffe?’. I said Joan. I picked up the cell phone and called her. That’s how it all began.” Maurer and Allen were working on another film that was still getting off the ground.

Georgia O’Keeffe is one of the great American artists of the 20th-century. Her landscapes show a side of America most people, even most Americans hadn’t seen. Less well known is her art that depicts the city. Filling the canvas, O’Keeffe draws you into her art whether it’s one of the large flowers, landscapes, the city or the desert with the cow’s skull.

The Lifetime TV movie about Georgie O’Keeffe shows a very independent woman in a time when women weren’t allowed to be independent. She catches the eye of Alfred Steiglitz, a famous photographer and New York art gallery owner. Stieglitz shows O’Keeffe’s work at first without her knowledge. O’Keeffe comes to New York to confront Stieglitz. The two fall in love, despite Seiglitz being married. Steiglitz brings heartache to O’Keeffe so she travels to New Mexico to find solace in her work. She falls in love with the New Mexico landscape. Her work there sustains her. O’Keeffe and Steiglitz separate and reunite throughout their lives.

The story Of Georgia O”Keeffe is inspiring. She was a practical woman who painted evocative and provocative pieces of art. It’s great to see LifetimeTV doing another biography.

Georgia was an inspired painter. “You get whatever accomplishment you are willing to declare,” said O’Keeffe. “The days you work are the best days. Nobody sees a flower really; it is so small. “We haven’t time, and to see takes time, like to have a friend takes time.” I found I could say things with color and shapes that I couldn’t say any other way, things I had no words for.”

Georgia O’Keeffe premieres tonight Saturday, Sept. 19tj at 9 pm et/pt on LifetimeTV. Encores Sept. 20th at 7 pm et/pt and Sept. 22th at 9 pm et/pt.