The Flame of Stillness: The Red Maple at Lake George

The Flame of Stillness reimagines Georgia O’Keeffe’s  The Red Maple at Lake George not simply as a landscape of seasonal change but as an emotional topography—where autumnal flame merges with feminine form, and silence is painted in rich, burning tones. This conceptual collage breathes a surreal life into O’Keeffe’s original inspiration, intertwining floral curves, feminine profiles, and urban echoes, crafting a glowing meditation on beauty, transformation, and vulnerability in the midst of stillness.  

At the heart of the piece, two ethereal faces emerge from crimson foliage and cascading petals. Their eyes are veiled, their lips parted in thought or memory, their essence suspended between dream and smoke. The tree itself—once standing stately by the shores of Lake George—is abstracted into velvety folds that blur into human skin, flower petals, and emotional pigment. The maple becomes more than tree; it becomes woman, flame, and memory.  

Georgia O’Keeffe saw nature not as background but as subject, and in this reconstruction, the natural form of the red maple is not external—it blooms from within. The iconic folds of O’Keeffe’s flowers now flow into the human faces layered in the upper half of the composition. These are not portraits but manifestations—symbols of love, longing, and the passing seasons of the soul. They face inward, contemplative, lost in autumn's soft fire.  

Color here does not rest passively; it leads the emotional charge. Deep crimson dominates, rich and immersive. This red is not simply seasonal—it is primal. It represents both the fire of life and the ache of letting go. The reds bleed into orange and rust, echoing the decay and beauty of fall. In these hues is the truth of transformation: that beauty does not resist change—it glows through it. Alongside the red pulses, muted violets and dusty mauves cast a veil of intimacy and melancholy, like bruised petals or fading memories. They soften the fire, allowing it to become poetic rather than violent.  

Soft blacks and twilight blues ground the composition in cool contrast, mimicking the lake’s deep waters and the approaching dusk. These cooler shades don’t extinguish the fire but cradle it. The black is not darkness but reflection; the blue is not sadness but serenity. Between them, the red finds its power—reflected, tempered, and seen.  

In the background, the suggestion of city grids and lamplight evokes a shifting tension between nature and civilization, solitude and crowd. These fragmented windows and golden orbs are remnants of another world—the structured, modern landscape O’Keeffe often resisted in favor of raw, organic forms. Yet here they remain, layered behind the faces, like fading memories of modern life dissolving into nature’s raw pulse. The maples, now no longer trees but pulses of memory, still burn despite the towering city behind them.  

This is not a peaceful autumn. It is a private one—burning with the quiet drama of inner change. O’Keeffe’s personal relationship to Lake George was one of duality. It was a place of retreat and creation, but also a space she outgrew. In this reinterpretation, that duality plays out in flame and shadow. The figures do not smile. They hold the ache of transition, the seduction of solitude, and the bittersweet act of becoming.  

The flame-like petals at the lower half swirl upward like a firestorm, rising from the lake like the breath of autumn itself. Their curves mirror the shape of a heart, a body, and a leaf simultaneously. O’Keeffe’s bold floral abstractions return here in symbolic form, not to seduce the eye but to awaken emotion. They are not literal flowers—they are internal landscapes. They bloom from longing, not from soil.  

The golden-orange lights behind the faces serve as symbolic streetlamps or distant stars—guides for transition, glimmers in a reflective world. They signal change, not in loud proclamations, but in soft pulses that echo through memory. Their placement suggests a quiet street at dusk, a turning moment where something ends but leaves a glow behind.  

In composing  The Flame of Stillness , I wished to preserve O’Keeffe’s reverence for form and color while allowing the red maple to evolve beyond the frame of nature into the mirror of the psyche. It is no longer a tree in a field. It is an inner fire burning through reflection and surrender. It is autumn as felt from within. It is beauty, even as it falls. And in that falling—there is grace.