The Pelton House
The landscape that shaped her vision
Agnes Pelton's home, Cathedral City, California, 1940s. | Raymond Jonson Archives, University of New Mexico Art Museum
In January 1932, at the age of fifty, Agnes Pelton arrived in Palm Springs, guided in part by her correspondence with her friend Bettye K. Cree (Elizabeth Kirkpatrick Cree), a prominent advocate for the desert arts community.
Cree maintained a beautiful two-story art gallery in Palm Springs, where she exhibited Pelton’s work, connected her with buyers, and encouraged her to settle in the desert so she could fully devote herself to her practice in the landscape she loved. Pelton soon made her home a few miles south of Palm Springs in Cathedral City. There, she felt an immediate connection to the surrounding landscape, particularly the presence of Mount San Jacinto and Mount San Gorgonio, whose forms and beauty convinced her that she had arrived for a meaningful reason. She seemed to have found what she was searching for.
At that time, Cathedral City was a small desert town defined by open space and sweeping, uninterrupted views. Pelton’s home was situated within the Cathedral City Cove, within walking distance of the town center and surrounded by the vast desert landscape. The setting offered both access to daily life and immersion in nature. A lifelong student of the natural world, Pelton was deeply responsive to the distinctive beauty of her new environment. She was fascinated by plant life capable of surviving in the desert and painted desert trees and date palm fruit as enduring symbols of life and strength. The region’s expansive skies, dramatic mountains, and deep canyons also left a lasting impression. In a 1957 interview, she reflected on the power of the desert, saying, “The vibrations of this light, the spaciousness of these skies enthrall me. I knew there was a spirit in nature as in everything else, but here in the desert it was an especially bright spirit. I found wonders here.”
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“The two mountains—San Jacinto and San Gorgonio are so gorgeous. I have a feeling that there is some special reason for being here.”
On March 2, 1936, her father’s birthday, Pelton made a down payment on a lot in Cathedral City.
Agnes noted with quiet wonder how each stage of the process, from the bank loan to the construction of her home, aligned with a series of astrological signs she had been following.
Cathedral Canyon Cove & Highway 111, c. 1935. Photograph by Burton Frasher, The Frasher Collection
A custom postcard of her Cathedral City home, sent by Agnes Pelton to family and friends.
Agnes stayed connected in her own way, making custom postcards sent from the stillness of the desert to family and friends she loved. Many of these are still kept by Pelton’s living relatives. This postcard is on view at the Pelton House, alongside other historical pieces from the Agnes Pelton Society collection.
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Agnes Pelton’s Cathedral City home and the art shaped by its landscape
At her Cathedral City home, Pelton shaped both her life and her work. Here, she found a lasting refuge where her art could fully flourish. In her 1932 grant application to the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, she described a project focused on painting “awakening life” in the spring desert, drawn to the radiant brilliance of desert flowers. She believed her abstract work had led her to a way of creating light through pigment, and felt confident in her ability to capture the luminous quality of desert blooms.
As she made the desert her home, Pelton began to blossom both spiritually and creatively. The landscape inspired her, and she found a circle of friends and fellow artists. She built meaningful connections, becoming a trusted neighbor and a quiet spiritual presence within her creative community.
Her Cathedral City studio became the heart of this growing network. Friends and fellow painters gathered there to share techniques, exchange ideas, and show their work.
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Pelton’s Cathedral City studio hosted exhibitions, friendships, and the beginnings of the Desert Art Center, becoming a hub where artists shared work, ideas, and community.
Pelton’s home studio was a precursor to the the Desert Art Center, with exhibitions held along her living room walls. As the community grew, artists raised funds to reestablish a permanent home. Pelton contributed by donating her painting Smoke Tree in Bloom, which was auctioned for $1,000—a significant step toward the center’s permanent establishment. She believed her desert paintings were best experienced in the desert itself. While she exhibited locally, including at the Desert Inn and the Palm Springs Desert Museum, her home remained central: a place where she supported fellow artists, welcomed visitors, and kept her doors open to the creative life around her.
Many artists passed through Pelton’s doors, exhibiting their work on the same walls that remain today. She was especially close to a progressive circle of women painters often described as a Bohemian “sisterhood” in Cathedral City. This group, sometimes called the “Sisterhood of the Creosote,” was a tightly knit community of pioneering women who sought both spiritual and artistic freedom in the desert. Living and working in close proximity, often in small, modest cabins. They supported one another, shared ideas, and helped shape the thriving art colony in Cathedral City and the broader Coachella Valley.
Pelton’s friends and collaborators included notable figures such as Bettye K. Cree, Matille “Billie” Prigge Seaman, Christina Lillian, Alice Geiger, Emilie Tilton, Cornelia Sussman, Mary Wolseth, Helene Wolseth Barber, Florence Miller Pierce, and Mabel Dodge Luhan. The group also intersected with influential artists and visionaries like Val Samuelson, Dane Rudhyar, Raymond Jonson, Cabot Yerxa, and Jimmy Swinnerton. Together, they supported a thriving creative community, fostering a fertile and interconnected artistic environment in which Pelton played a central and sustaining role.
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Agnes Pelton and Raymond Jonson, 1935. Courtesy of the University of New Mexico Art Museum.
Christina Lillian on her property. A close friend and neighbor of Agnes Pelton, she was an arts patron who established and led the Sven-Ska artists’ colony. Photo courtesy of Evan and Sharon Lindquist.
Christina Lillian, close friend and neighbor of Agnes Pelton, she was an arts patron who established and led the Sven-SKa artists’ colony.
Agnes Pelton’s portrait of Christina Lillian, date unknown. Oil on canvas.
Jimmy Swinnerton. Curtesy of Los Angeles Herald Examiner Photo Collection. A pioneering cartoonist who began as a teenager with the San Francisco Examiner.
Jimmy Swinnerton; Painting "Blossoming Smoke Trees" 1960. Curtesy of USC Digital Library. A cartoonist turned desert painter, he spent much of his life in the Coachella Valley, where he died at 98.
Matille “Billie” Prigge Seaman, directing a painting class in Box Canyon, c. 1947. By Ellis, Wilson Davis
Matille (“Billie”) Prigge Seaman
Agnes Pelton’s living room, then and now.
Agnes Pelton’s home was built around her art, with the studio at its center and her easel always in place. Like her earlier windmill studio, it was a space where living and making were closely connected. The house is modest but thoughtfully designed and well kept. The diamond shape, meaningful to Pelton, appears in the hand-scored concrete floor. Simple materials—white walls, exposed brick, and quiet details—define the space, including recessed niches in the fireplace once used for personal and spiritual objects.
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Uncovering the Hidden History of Agnes Pelton’s Desert Home
When Peter Paladino purchased the home, he had no clue it was Pelton’s; its history had long faded from memory. Over time, the Cathedral City Cove neighborhood had grown around it, turning what was once the front entrance into the rear. The property continued to evolve, with a defined lot, large windows, a pool, and a two-story loft added over the decades. Though transformed, the house seemed to undergo a quiet desert reawakening, as its creative spirit slowly began to return.
Peter and his husband, Simeon Den, both artists, were unaware that the home had once been Agnes Pelton’s beloved desert cottage and art studio. Once in escrow, Peter’s realtor, Chris Rain, informed him that the house was Pelton’s original home studio. With the house rediscovered, more notable historians began to emerge, and the home’s story started to unfold. Professor Nancy Shelley reached out to Peter; this was a pivotal meeting, as she had spent years writing her dissertation on Pelton and had amassed a wealth of information, documentation, and insight into Agnes’s life and work. Professor Shelley visited the home and gifted Peter his first Pelton piece.
Peter and Den felt honored that the home had, in a way, chosen them. Every small discovery along the way seemed like a gift and a moment of synchronicity. They would stumble upon more clues while living there and making home improvements: the home’s original door, which had been covered over, along with an inset frame bearing Pelton’s spiritual symbol, a mark of personal significance, revealed itself to them. Over time, the couple developed an intimate connection to Pelton and made it their life’s purpose to advocate for her legacy, embracing the home’s mystical presence. To this day, the Pelton House serves as a welcoming beacon for those seeking to learn more about her and to embrace creativity, spirituality, and diversity.
“The vibration of this light, the spaciousness of these skies enthralled me. I knew there was a spirit in nature as in everything else, but here in the desert it was an especially bright spirit.”
— Agnes Pelton
Carrying the House Forward: Artists as Stewards of a Living Home
The house could not have found more fitting stewards than Peter Paladino and Simeon Den. Peter, a professional photographer and hairstylist, and Simeon, a classically trained dancer and teacher, felt an immediate and deep connection to the residence and to Agnes Pelton herself. For decades, they advocated for Pelton’s recognition, both locally in the Coachella Valley and internationally within the fine art world.
They embraced the adjacent alleyway long used by the Cathedral City Cove neighborhood as a pathway to the city center, commissioning local emerging artists to transform it with murals, artwork, and mosaics that eventually lined the walls surrounding the home. Following Pelton’s own practice of welcoming the community in, they opened the house to neighbours, admirers of her work, and those drawn to the home’s vibrant creative energy. Over time, the house once again became a gathering place for artists and art lovers alike, hosting art historians, writers, dancers, and creatives across disciplines.
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A Home Beyond Its Walls: Peter and Simeon’s Role in Shaping a Living Community and Public Art Space
Both Peter and Simeon seemed uniquely suited to guide this next chapter of the home’s life. Simeon, a disciplined professional dancer, artist and new age mystic, hosted group singing bowl gatherings by the pool and led weekly yoga and dance classes up until his passing. Peter developed a deep affinity for mosaic art, beginning in the alleyway and gradually extending into the home’s additions, always preserving the integrity of the original structure. Over time, he undertook long-term mosaic projects that complemented the character of the house, both inside and out.
Together, they organized community festivals, tours, and performances, including intuitive dance performances staged on the home’s flat roof. In recognition of their legacy—and the work they devoted to transforming the alleyway into a public art space—the city ultimately designated the surrounding alleyway and street as Agnes Pelton Way.
During their years living in the Pelton House, Peter and Simeon formed lasting friendships that echo the spirit of Agnes’s own close-knit circle and creative community. In this way, the home continues to carry that legacy forward, sustained by both new and longtime friends of Agnes’s work. Grateful to play a small part in her story, they acknowledge the many contributors, supporters, and friends who have helped bring renewed attention to her presence in the desert.
