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Shades of Engagement

Shades of Engagement:

Georgia O’Keeffe and the Erotic Landscapes of Maui
Outpost Press / An imprint of Wayfarer Books, 2024
Available at Amazon , Barnes & Noble, Waterstones , and more


Georgia O’Keeffe —
passenger 27     age 51
sails first class from Los Angeles to Honolulu on Matson Company’s
seafaring château     the SS Lurline.          Her fine     articulated fingers
curled around the coarse dark wood railing     she rolls with the Pacific.
The Hawaiian Pineapple Company     the pre of Dole Pineapple
is to cover all expenses.          In exchange     she’ll paint pineapples
for their national pineapple promotion campaign:

Hospitable Hawai‘i cannot send you
Its abundance of flowers or its sunshine.
But it will send you something of both —

          golden, fragrant Dole Pineapple Juice

Capsule:

In a delightful fusing of prose and poetry, Shades of Engagement is a passionate meditation of earth, waters and sky, illuminating Georgia O’Keeffe’s 1939 awakening journey through the immensity of the Pacific Ocean and intimacy of Maui’s lush ‘Īao Valley.

Musings on the spirituality of the sexually charged landscape stroke the transformative relationship between the creative artist and the vast, unobstructed ocean disc and canopy of sky — portal into inexpressible expanse and freedom — before engaging with the erotic and luscious Maui landscape.

As physical explorations and meditations deepen, they are blessed with a series of initiations offered by the valley itself, inviting their engagement with its three layers of meaning — landscape illuminated and painted through its outer physicality, inner tales and secret sensuality.  A contemplative journey as much the author’s as Georgia O’Keeffe’s. 

Encountering the canyons that O’Keeffe painted, previously unknown to both art historians and locals, the author is presented with the mystical insight that Georgia O’Keeffe painted the landscape as the landscape would have painted O’Keeffe, realizing that the perpetual penetrating rain, mist and clouds, integral to the mountain’s sustenance, were not intended by the valley to obscure its bounties; rather, to divulge the vitality of its two million–year–old presence as none other than the miraculous breath of Space — and life — itself.  As such, Shades of Engagement is to be read as a meditation, slowly and deliberately, a living spirit. 

Guaranteed, you’ll never look at landscape and art the same way again.