Hours before daylight, Elaine Mathews wakes up thinking of a palm tree or piece of sky she wants to work on. “I want to get started and I don’t want to wait,” she says. So while her husband, Steve, sleeps,…
Elaine Mathews: Master of Rock and Earth
An Appraiser Looks at Swinnerton
Ed. Note: Santa Barbara art historian, curator and appraiser Alissa J. Anderson has a special affinity for desert paintings. She grew up in Lake Arrowhead and made frequent trips to Palm Springs as a youth. “I love the austerity of…
Cady Wells and the Desert Modern
I’m no longer surprised when I hear about a hot Southwestern artist and then find he or she had ties to the Coachella Valley. In fact, I’ve come to expect those connections. The newest discovery is Henry Cady Wells, a…
Ralph Love and Roy Morrissey: The Art Shacks of Temecula
Update: Roy Morrissey died on July 7, 2011, in Hemet. The tourists called it Tee-mah-COOL-ya, if they called it anything at all. There were only a few hundred people in Temecula in the 1960s, but located as it was halfway…
Plein Air Painting in the Desert
California is a vast and picturesque region with a great variety of landscape. From the snow-capped peaks of the Sierra Nevada Mountains to the dazzling beaches and coves of the coast; from the flower-covered hills and secluded tree-lined valleys to…
Two Agneses, Middle Earth Maps, Joe De Yong, Daughter of Zorro and more
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…