Georgia O’Keeffe blurs the line between the natural and the man-made in this painting, using brushstrokes in beige to integrate the land and church. She depicts the east facade of the Spanish Mission Church of San Jose de Chama, in Hernandez, New Mexico, with a remarkable play of scale: the building fills the composition, implying vastness, but the panel itself is tiny. Built in the 1840s while New Mexico was part of a newly independent Mexico, the adobe church symbolizes the Catholic conversion of the region’s indigenous Pueblo people during the sixteenth century, as the architectural styles of pueblos and the Spanish colonizers blended in churches like this one. Here, O’Keeffe emphasizes the dense, baked quality of adobe with thick paint and a matte finish. Though she was raised in the Episcopal Church, as an adult the artist often infused her work with a broader spirituality that fused nature and culture.