A Lesson from “The Healing Desert”
By Sally Denton
A year ago, I returned home to Nevada after many years in New Mexico. I came to Reno seeking answers to a serious health issue, and I found the medical specialists who helped save my life. I am a third-generation Nevadan born in Elko, raised in Boulder City, and educated at the University of Nevada, Reno. I laughingly tell my friends that I should call my memoir “Three Hundred Miles in Seventy Years”—from my birthplace in Elko to my end-of-the-trail home in Reno. I am better now and grateful for every day of wellness.
Photo courtesy of Sally Denton, James Swinnerton’s artwork, The Healing Desert.
My 99-year-old mother still lives independently in my childhood Boulder City home, and my husband and I visit her often. On a recent trip she bestowed upon me a family treasure that has hung above her fireplace for decades. It is a painting by the renowned western landscape artist James Swinnerton called The Healing Desert.
The large 30” x 46” canvas, with its muted tans and grays, speaks to the loneliness and quiet of the Nevada desert my family knows so well. Two tire tracks in the sand lead to a small wooden hut where a water barrel squats in front of the door. A few angular cactus and sparse greasewood dot the terrain, and the little shack is the only dwelling visible for miles. With its fiery and foreboding sunset, at first glance the painting’s title seems like a crude joke.
Photo courtesy of Sally Denton.
The grandson of covered wagon pioneers, Swinnerton knew intimately how the desert could heal the body and the spirit. In 1911, he was the young man in the hut fighting tuberculosis. He had been given a month to live. In this hovel near Searchlight, Nevada, a truck would periodically come and fill the water drum and he would paint all day every day, every sunset, and every storm. The desert not only cured him, but it transformed him from a high-flying newspaper illustrator with the Hearst media empire in San Francisco and New York City, to one of the great artists of the American West.
My parents and I met Swinnerton in 1963 when he was a very old man, and I was 10 years old. My mother and a small group were starting an art festival and had invited Swinnerton to show his paintings at the inaugural event. Now, 60 years later, “Art in the Park” is one of the largest outdoor juried shows in the Southwest.
While Swinnerton’s paintings rarely depicted people, they evoked humanity in their tone and settings. “No one can become bigoted and narrow in the midst of broad desert vistas and great canyon walls,” the artist once said.
Reflecting on this cherished gift from my mother, I realized there is a lesson in the humanities behind a seemingly simple piece of art. Like Swinnerton, I have been healed by this deceivingly rich, giving place, this desert of abundance, friendship, and medical care. The painting now hangs above the hearth in our historic old house in Reno, and, like me, it has come home.
Sally Denton is an investigative reporter and historian, and the author of nine books of nonfiction. She has received the Robert Laxalt Distinguished Writer Award and been inducted into the Nevada Writers Hall of Fame. She also serves on the Nevada Humanities Board of Trustees. To learn more about Sally Denton and her work visit sallydenton.com.
Photo courtesy of Sally Denton.