Two books about Georgia O’Keeffe’s nine-week sojourn in Hawaii in 1939 are being released this month. Back then, the Dole Pineapple Co. commissioned O’Keeffe to produce two paintings for an ad campaign – she produced 20. Rarely seen together, all 20 are reproduced in “Georgia O’Keeffe’s Hawai’i” and a narrative is provided by Patricia Jennings, daughter of the Hana sugar plantation manager who hosted the painter in their Maui home for ten days, when Ms. Jennings was 12 years old.
Children’s book author Amy Novesky penned “Georgia in Hawaii: When Georgia O’Keeffe Painted What She Pleased” and illustrator Yuyi Morales had the daunting task of reproducing the paintings. There is a two-page spread that depicts all 20 paintings in the same art gallery but all are obscured in one way or another. Fearful of copyright issues, the publisher’s lawyers said the illustrations were too close to the real deal.
