Once a rising star on New York’s modern art scene, Agnes Pelton is little known today. The abstract painter sensed a “spirit in nature” and let it lure her from the east coast to the west. In Cathedral City, California, she found her artistic vision—exploding stars, glimmering spheres, ovoid sunrises. These 45 paintings celebrate the “especially bright spirit” of both the desert and the artist. —C.J.F.