For artists new to the desert and looking for a guide to its essence, track down a copy of J. Smeaton Chase’s 1919 volume California Desert Trails. The English-born Chase traveled with early Palm Springs artist Carl Eytel; his words…
Arizona art dealer and author Gary Fillmore continues his absorbing Looking for Jimmy series, named for the former Palm Desert artist Jimmy Swinnerton. In a recent episode Gary solved the mystery of the Canyon Kiddies figurines. A woman phoned Gary…
The Desert X team may want to look to Indio for an example of site-specific art firmly rooted in the desert soil. You start with a local ingredient, in this case a 95-year-old water tower that stood at the corner…
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…
When Alan and Lois Stoneman built a home at Thunderbird Country Club in 1960, they asked Jimmy Swinnerton to paint them a smoke tree (a favorite of Alan’s.) Swinny borrowed the throw pillows from the couple’s sofa to make the painting match…
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…
Two major retrospectives of women who drew inspiration from the desert are on view currently in Southern California. Agnes Martin came to New Mexico in the late 1960s and lived alone in an adobe hut on a mesa. The Los…
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…
Artist and archaeologist Jim Toenjes sends holiday greetings “from way out Quartzsite way”. The former Palm Springs resident is now a nomadic artist, traveling the deserts (with winters in Washington state) in a camper with his paints and his dog,…
