When I was in New Mexico I went to the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum. I didn’t know much about O’Keeffe, but I was curious. One of her paintings, The Barns, Lake George captured my attention. She painted it in 1926. It is of two massive barns, one seen from the side, the other seen from one end, as if they are lined up at a right angle. The massive hulks of the black barns fill the canvas. Off to one side is another structure, a tiny slice of what looks like a cabin or studio. That wall is red.

In one barn there are two small lighted windows, each with 6 panes. In an arresting small detail one of the panes is black. Is it covered over or is the pane missing? It looks like a tooth that has been knocked out, a remnant of some violence or accident that no one has bothered to repair.

The museum’s information said that O’Keeffe fled towards the barns to escape her husband’s family. Alfred Stieglitz, her husband, not only paved the way for photography as a modern art, he launched O’Keeffe’s career at his influential gallery.

His family’s home at Lake George was a gathering place for waves of visitors, relatives and friends, a place where Stieglitz spent every summer. O’Keeffe found the noise and people too much, and fled to her studio. I imagine the studio is what we see in the tiny slice of red at the side of the painting, the one bright spot in the shadow of the hulking barns.

The painting spoke to me, not just because of O’Keeffe’s artistry, but because I understand that feeling of too many people, the introvert surrounded by extroverts. I don’t know if she was a woman forced to care for, entertain or feed those people, but I understand the oppressive weight of too many bodies, needs, demands, noise.

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