Carolyn Kleefeld is a spirit unfettered, who breathes with the rhythms of the Big Sur landscape but who also feels a certain vitality in traveling, in creating a world context for her creative expression. COVID curtailed that, but once she could continue to travel, she did, with her beloved David Compagna, a man she describes as Italian, Portuguese, a Mediterranean lover, a wise and humble partner and the great love of her life.
For Agnes Pelton, painting was a profound means for contemplation. Hers and ours.
Take “Messengers,” which centers on a luminous, vase-like translucent vessel floating in a dusky sky above a stylized, silhouetted mountain range. A light blue orb rises behind the mountains and before a pale wash of color, which steadily climbs to become a deep purple plane. Eight soft violet lights glow along the upper edge above six bright, golden palm fronds draped across the vessel’s top.
The painting is among the finest in “Agnes Pelton: Desert Transcendentalist,” a lovely exhibition at the Palm Springs Art Museum. It dates from 1932, amid the most productive period of the artist’s more than four-decade career.