Does artistic distortion "come nearer" to reality?

In his March-April 2013 column "A Beautiful Distortion" for Spirituality & Health magazine, Thomas Moore looks at art specifically the work of Georgia O'Keeffe. He writes:

"She said that she first painted natural objects in the ordinary way and then did her “dream thing,” after which the paintings would “come nearer reality than my objective kind of work.”

This second phase went beyond the ordinary and the literal, allowing her stunning flowers and clouds and skulls to touch an observer’s soul. Without being obviously religious, they have a spiritual impact. O’Keeffe was interested in mysticism and religion, although she didn’t follow a particular tradition or go to church. She was a natural, secular mystic who had a gift for expressing spiritual truths in her art."

Moore develops this theme of natural, secular mysticism in his forthcoming book, A Religion of One's Own (Gotham Books) for release in Fall 2013.