rincipal, she would reply..."When the spirit moves Georgia, she can do more in a day than you can do in a week" After receiving her diploma in 1905 she left for Chicago to live with her aunt and attend the Art Institute of Chicago. She did not return to the Institute the following year after getting Typhoid Fever. Instead, in 1907 she enrolled at the Art Student League in New York City. Discouraged with her work, she did not return to the League in the fall of 1908, but moved back to Chicago and found work as a commercial artist. During this period O'Keeffe did not pick up a brush, and said that the smell of turpentine made her sick. She moved back to her family in Williamsburg, Virginia in 1909 and later enrolled at a nearby college. In 1912 a friend in Texas wrote to her explaining of a teaching position was open in Amarillo, Texas for a "drawing supervisor". O'Keeffe applied for the position and was hired for the fall semester. O'Keeffe also made trips to Virginia in the summer months to teach at the University of Virginia. She would remain working at Amarillo until 1914. After resigning her job in Amarillo, O'Keeffe moved to New York City to attend Columbia Teachers College until accepting a teaching position at Columbia College in South Carolina. Having a light schedule, she felt it would be an ideal job that would give her time to paint. It was at this time that she left behind all she had been taught about in regards to painting and began to paint as she felt. "I have things in my head that are not like what anyone has taught me...shapes and ideas so near to me...so natural to my way of being and thinking that it hasn't occurred to me to put them down..." During her summers, she studied and taught art at the University of Virginia, working with Alon Bement, who introduced her to the theories of Arthur Wesley Dow. Returning to New York in 1914, she enrolled at Columbia Teachers College to study under Dow, whom she ...
