The Coachella Valley lost an important figure in desert painting in July with the death of Edna Hollinger. Hollinger was president of the Desert Art Center from 1994 to 1996. The Desert Art Center, in Palm Springs, dates to 1950 and was home to many of the Valley’s most illustrious artists. Hollinger and her friends were young when the last of the great early desert painters were old; she crossed paths with Jimmy Swinnerton and she painted with Wilton McCoy, Darwin Duncan, and others, along with still-active painters such as Louise Tennyson and Sally Ward.