Cady Wells and the Desert Modern

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I’m no longer surprised when I hear about a hot Southwestern artist and then find he or she had ties to the Coachella Valley. In fact, I’ve come to expect those connections. The newest discovery is Henry Cady Wells, a modernist Santa Fe artist who lived in Palm Springs at one time. Georgia O’Keeffe once remarked that she and her friend Wells were the two best artists from their region. And while Wells has been relatively obscure till now, his day has come largely due to the efforts of Lois P. Rudnick, editor of a satisfying...
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Ralph Love and Roy Morrissey: The Art Shacks of Temecula

Diablo Crossing, by Roy Morrissey

The tourists called it Tee-mah-COOL-ya, if they called it anything at all. There were only a few hundred people in Temecula in the 1960s, but located as it was halfway between the art towns of Laguna Beach and Palm Springs it was perfectly situated for a mini art explosion of its own.

Travelers...
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Eric Merrell: Bringing the California Desert to NYC

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Most Manhattan gallery-goers don’t know the names Jimmy Swinnerton or John Hilton; they can’t tell a smoketree from a cholla. While desert art is expanding its geographic appeal, it hasn’t reached the east coast yet. That transcontinental link may finally be forged, though, with Eric Merrell’s show “No Man is an Island”,...
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Plein Air Painting in the Desert

Plein Air Painting in the Desert

California is a vast and picturesque region with a great variety of landscape.  From the snow-capped peaks of the Sierra Nevada Mountains to the dazzling beaches and coves of the coast; from the flower-covered hills and secluded tree-lined valleys to the isolated splendor of the Mojave Desert; all these vistas were...
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The Hunt for Agnes Pelton’s Cabin

The Hunt for Agnes Pelton’s Cabin

On a recent morning, Kim Housken and Don Graybill (volunteer sleuths from the Historical Society of Palm Desert) squished into my Subaru and we drove off through the stately pines and meadows of Garner Valley in search of Agnes Pelton’s cabin.

It’s well known that in 1941, at age 60, Pelton bought a cabin...
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