San Jacinto Mountains Sequence 1985

Richard Misrach captured this image of the San Jacinto Mountains, maybe with a large format camera, and the desert shimmers in shades of beige and light grey. I imagine him out there, the sun beating down, waiting for the light to be just right. It’s the kind of scene that’s easy to overlook, but Misrach coaxes a kind of quiet beauty out of it. He sees the poetry in the ordinary. The composition is so simple: the line of scrubby bushes, the gentle curve of the dunes, and those hazy mountains in the background. It reminds me a bit of Agnes Martin's work, that same sense of serenity and restraint. Both artists share an interest in landscape. It’s like they’re both trying to distill the essence of a place, to capture a feeling more than a literal representation. And it makes you consider how the act of looking can be a form of meditation.