I was exiting the rotunda of Cathedral City Hall after a talk by Agnes Pelton scholar Michael Zakian. He had just finished saying that Pelton’s abstracts are rare and becoming more and more valuable. “We think we might have found…
My new culture heroes are painters who defy the art school injunction against old-fashioned landscape painting and simply walk outside with a paintbrush. You can meet one such rebel, Patricia Schaefer, tonight (Friday, April 27, 2012) at the opening of…
In desert art circles, the name Kevin Stewart equals respectability. The art appraiser and dealer is known for his impeccably pressed pinstripe shirts and his encyclopedic knowledge of desert art. You could take the man anywhere. So what was he…
The love of terrain (common to landscape painters and collectors of desert art) starts in childhood. In my case, ditching high school in the hills of the San Gabriel Valley imprinted me with an ardor for dry ranges. I don’t…
On April 3rd 2012, at Furnace Creek Visitor Center in Death Valley, artist Janet Morgan unveils her new book on the park, along with a month-long exhibition of paintings by Janet and her husband, Gregory Frux. Morgan was already on…
It was 2010, in Terry Masters’ painting class at Palm Springs’ Desert Art Center. Terry walked to the front of the room and hoisted a large canvas onto an easel. He flipped open his portable plein air kit (battle-scarred from hundreds…
The forgotten desert artist Freda Marshall, recently rediscovered, was a central figure among the Coachella Valley resident painters. For a dozen years or more she lived in her own house on the Indio estate of the late Jackie Cochran. Freda…
I think of El Paseo art galleries as places people go to decorate the walls of their luxury homes. Having no luxury home (maybe my Dinah Shore-style pad was luxurious when it was first built 50 years ago), I rarely…
I was looking for decorative paintings at a seasonal flea market in Sonoma County when I found this desert painting by Freda Marshall. I thought that I would be able to resell it for my monthly “nut”, the amount of…
Moving from Ohio to the alien landscape of Wonder Valley, David Greene encountered many wonders—not the least being the desert night. Greene had been working in a toilet factory in Ohio (hand-painting ceramic bath ware), and had never traveled east…
