When Thomas Penniston wrote to ask if Agnes Pelton might have painted the painting he’d found online, of a fisherman in an Eastern stream, I doubted that she did. Would Hilma af Klint have painted a bear hunt in the…
When the City of Indian Wells bulldozed Carl Bray’s home and gallery in 2010, an epic David versus Goliath story ended. The City had tried to evict Bray for decades because his hand-built home on Hwy 111 clashed with their…
It seems the desert herself has elected an ambassador and sent her out into the world to represent us. Sharon Ellis–who works quietly in Yucca Valley–has a show, New Works on Paper, at the Kohn Gallery in Los Angeles through October…
Eric Merrell shows widely in the West, but soon you’ll have a rare opportunity to see 35 works of the desert master right here in the Coachella Valley. Merrell completed the series of paintings–showing the “wonder and strength” of the…
Inspired by the recent California Desert Art article on Lynda Keeler’s maps, Michael Moore sent some of his own “imaginary topographics”. For decades, the widely exhibited artist has been exploring and mapping the northern Great Basin Desert. He grew up…
When a fox named Fresno encounters three border-crossing foxes from Mexico, they all wind up partying at a palm oasis–in a series of enchanting illustrations by British-born artist Anthony W. Parr. “A fox knows no borders, just how to have…
Art and Theosophy at Lomaland You don’t have to labor through Helena Blavatsky’s tomes to get a taste for Theosophy, an esoteric belief system that inspired Agnes Pelton and so many others. The teachings are notoriously opaque to modern minds,…
April 18, 2019–Ever since Agnes Pelton and Agnes Martin were paired in a 2009 exhibit at the Orange County Museum of Art, the two have seemed like sisters–though apparently they never met. Both women sought vastness in the desert (Pelton…
November 28, 2018–An update for those of you following the saga of the Bascom Ranch. A group called Coachella Valley Preservationists appealed to the City of Victorville to save the historic home of artist and rodeo star Earl Bascom, but…
With Desert X returning to the Valley in 2019, all eyes will be on installations scaled to Instagram. In the shift to Insta-art, those who work in the enduring tradition of 20th Century Impressionist painters are easily overlooked. One such…
