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In the summer of 1916, Georgia O'Keeffe camped with friends in the Appalachian Mountains before beginning a teaching position in Canyon, Texas in September. When she was not teaching, O'Keeffe could be seen exploring the landscape around Canyon. These excursions inspired several watercolors where her abstract experiments met her experience of the outdoors.

In 'Hill, Stream and Moon, O'Keeffe's approach is almost fully abstract: A large hill arches over the composition, while a blue stripe between two green banks denotes a stream. Above the hill, a yellow moon emerges in the sky.

Years later, in 1976, O'Keeffe wrote: "Objective painting is not good painting unless it is good in the abstract sense.

A hill or tree cannot make a good painting just because it is a hill or a tree. It is lines and colors put together so that they say something."