Desert art is in the news this month with the approach of Desert X, the site specific event (February 25-April 30, 2017) that will overlap with the Coachella music festival. A sister event, Joshua Treenial, takes place March 31st through…
One of the premier Impressionist painters in the US in the early 1900s, Julian Itter was also a Mojave desert artist and gold miner. Yet none of his desert paintings have been found. Adrienne Sadlo, a student at Eastern Washington…
Five years after her groundbreaking exhibit of Salton Sea art, Valley of the Ancient Lake, Deborah Martin again brings together a mix of artists interpreting the Sea. The new exhibit, The Salton Sea: Lost in Paradise, opens March 21st, 2016,…
Bill Bender was the last of the desert painters–the original desert painters, that is. Of the 13 artists profiled in Ed Ainsworth’s 1960 classic Painters of the Desert, Bender long outlived his compadres. He was a caring friend and a…
The Cathedral City Historical Society hosts the master of desert Americana, Ron Backer, at a luncheon Thursday, November 5, 2015. Backer, a transplant from South Dakota, zones in on a neighborhood and soon unearths stories even the locals don’t know;…
Fans of Cathedral City artist Agnes Pelton have long awaited the book by the City’s first mayor–and a friend to the early artists–Robert Hillery. At last Cathedral City: the Early Years 1925 to 1981 is in print. You can meet…
If anyone can save the Salton Sea, I’m betting on Andrew Dickson. The Cal State U. Fullerton art professor has been quietly, intently focused on painting the Sea for 15 years. Now you have a chance to study with him…
In the spirit of the early desert painters, Jim Trolinger and a band of talented friends are taking on the California deserts one by one. They’ve twice journeyed to Death Valley, and they descended on Joshua Tree in March. You…
This weekend (March 8 and 9th, 2014) brings a pop-up display of Stephen Willard’s desert paintings to Terry Masters’ Palm Springs gallery. Willard was best known for his work as a photographer in the Palm Springs area but he was…
With the desert strangely warm this season, the snakes have awakened early and artists from colder places are busy in the canyons. One such visitor, Randall David Tipton, is a spellbinding landscape painter well-known in Portland and the Northwest–but he…
