The houses are sixty years old. The people painting them are very much alive. A number of working artists have taken the butterfly roof, the swimming pool and the cocktail hour as their subject, and their work is some of the easiest art to live with if you already own the furniture.
We do not sell art on this site. What follows is a guide to ten living artists who paint the period, with prices where they have been published, and what to know before you buy. Prices are as listed on the pages we checked and will change.
The artists
Shag (Josh Agle). Born in 1962 and based in Orange County, California, Shag is the best known of them. His scenes of modern houses, tiki bars and cocktail parties have been shown since a first solo exhibition in Hollywood in 1997. He sells paintings and limited-edition serigraphs through the Shag Store on North Palm Canyon Drive in Palm Springs, which opened in 2010. His release for Modernism Week 2026, an eleven-color serigraph in a signed and numbered edition of 200, was listed at $1,600.
Danny Heller. A native of the San Fernando Valley, Heller paints tract houses, Eichlers, Googie buildings and period cars in oil, in a manner close to photographic. He is represented by George Billis Gallery, and his work is in the collection of the Long Beach Museum of Art.
Andy Burgess. Born in London and based in Tucson, Arizona, Burgess paints modernist and midcentury houses. A book of them, Modernist House Paintings, was published in 2018, the year he showed at the Tucson Museum of Art. He has been with the Cynthia Corbett Gallery in London since 2004.
Chris Turnham. A printmaker who has also worked as a background artist in animation, Turnham makes hand-pulled silkscreens of the Kaufmann Desert House, the Eames House and other landmarks. This is the place to start on a budget. His site lists giclée prints from $45 and silkscreens from $60 to $150. The Kaufmann house print, a ten-color silkscreen in a signed edition of 50, is listed at $120.
Michael Murphy. Trained as an architect, Murphy paints modern buildings in San Francisco, Los Angeles and Palm Springs in acrylic, and works under the name Supersonic Modern from a studio in San Francisco. At a gallery show in 2025 his work was priced from $500 to $3,400.
Carrie Graber. Born in 1974 and trained at Art Center College of Design, Graber paints Palm Springs architecture, pools and figures in strong light, in oil. She is represented by Chloe Gallery in San Francisco.
Leah Giberson. Working in New England, Giberson paints suburban houses, trailers, pools and lawn chairs. She shows through Nahcotta in Portsmouth, New Hampshire.
Jessica Brilli. A Massachusetts painter born in 1977, Brilli works in acrylic on wood panel from found Kodachrome slides of the 1950s to the 1970s: suburbia, pools and cars. She received a Pollock-Krasner Foundation grant in 2021 and had a solo show at Maddox Gallery in London in 2024. Boston magazine listed one of her paintings at $2,250 in 2023.
Derek Yaniger. For the lifestyle more than the architecture: beatniks, hot rods and tiki, drawn in pencil and colored digitally. Yaniger has been an artist for the Tiki Oasis festival since 2002. Prints on his site run from $30 to $60.
El Gato Gomez. A Pittsburgh artist who works under a pseudonym and paints retro-futurist scenes, butterfly-roof houses and cats. Prints in her online shop run from about $22 to $50.
Original, serigraph or giclée
Three different things are sold as art, at very different prices, and the words matter. The print definitions here follow the glossary of the International Fine Print Dealers Association.
An original painting is the one object the artist painted. There is only one.
A screenprint, or serigraph, is made by pushing ink through a stenciled mesh screen, one screen for each color. When the artist conceives the image as a print, it counts as an original print, not a copy.
A giclée is a fine-art inkjet print. If it is a photographic copy of a painting, the association classes it as a reproduction, even when the edition is limited. That is not a reason to avoid one. It is a reason for it to cost less.
The numbers. A print marked 5/50 is one of an edition of fifty. The number does not tell you the order in which it was printed. A print marked A.P. is an artist's proof, made outside the numbered edition and set aside for the artist.
Before you pay, ask three questions. Is it signed? How large is the edition? Does the price include the frame?
Where to buy in person
Palm Springs is the place to see the most of this work at once. Modernism Week runs from February 11 to 21, 2027, with a shorter October edition from October 15 to 18, 2026. The Intersect Palm Springs art and design fair is scheduled for February 11 to 15, 2027, at the convention center.
Elsewhere, go to the galleries named above, or buy directly from the artists' own sites.
If you are an artist
Painters and printmakers who work in this territory are welcome to list their work in our Market.