During his years in Boston, Jan Cox undoubtedly came to know more of the work of Georgia O'Keeffe (b. 1887, Wisconsin, d. 1986, New Mexico).  Motifs she constantly returns to in her paintings include flowers, rocks, shells, animals, bones and landscapes, often with abstracted contours and forms with subtle, multicolored tones that transform these subjects into powerful, near-abstract representations.  Aside from formal similarities in their work, Jan Cox also felt a kinship by virtue of her relentless quest for beauty and the sublime.  Georgia O'Keeffe was convinced that visual symbols were essential as a way of understanding our surroundings and of exploring our inner selves.  For O'Keeffe, so imbued with the spiritual and the transcendental, 'the sublime' was no theoretical concept but rather something visible in experiences of the everyday world.

"It is only by selection, by elimination, and by emphasis that we get at the real meaning of things." - Georgia O'Keeffe