Kevin Key grew up in the conformity of a San Diego suburb with a vigilant HOA. Naturally, as a young man he was drawn to the desert to the east where there were no rules and you could find old,…
Ed. Update–We are sorry to report that Katherine McKay died of cancer, in Richmond, Calif., on October 12, 2011. Editor’s Note—We’ve been telling you about the early desert painters; with this essay by Katherine McKay we shift into the…
Around 1930 a young botanist from Chicago came to the Borrego desert to dig in the sand and collect native plants. At some point hunting for tansy-mustard and tidy-tips wasn’t enough for her, so she took out her easel and began painting the dunes and smoke trees.
Last month I picked up one of her 1930s Borrego paintings on eBay for $99. When I hung the painting on my bedroom wall, it immediately connected me to Edith Purer herself (she became California’s first woman ecologist), as well as to the plants, topography and mood of Anza-Borrego.
