Ed Mell was born in Phoenix, Arizona in 1942 and started drawing as soon as he could hold a pencil. Graduating from Phoenix Junior College with an Associated Arts Degree, he enrolled in The Art Center College of Design in Los Angeles to

pursue his interest in illustration. With this training, he went to New York in 1968 to work as an art director for a prominent advertising agency. The following year,

he opened up his own illustration studio, Sagebrush Studios, in Manhattan, serving some of the areaʼs top editorial and advertising clients such as Cheerios and RCA. But success had its price, and within three years the Arizona native was struggling

with the fast-paced New York lifestyle and pressures of the advertising business. Mell jumped at the opportunity to teach summer classes in silk screening and

drawing on the Hopi Reservation at Hotevilla, Arizona. When the summer session was complete, he took a hard look at his future and decided to get back to his Arizona roots. A few months later he and Andrews closed Sagebrush Studios.

Mell returned to Phoenix in 1973 to continue his commercial work in illustration, while painting landscapes of the West on a part-time basis. By 1979 the demand for his fine art was great enough to make the transition to working on his fine art

painting full-time. Working in oils, he put his main emphasis on landscapes and subjects that depict the West. By 1984 he had begun creating bronze sculptures, and in the late eighties, he applied his angular

style to flowers and Western figurative subject matter.

His works are included in many private and corporate collections including the Forbes Collection, Tri-Star Pictures, City of Scottsdale, Kartchner Caverns State Park, Diane Keaton, Arnold Schwartzenegger

and Bruce Babbitt. He is also well known for the posters he produced for the Grand Canyon Chamber Music Festival. He began producing these posters in 1985, which was the Festivalʼs second season.

His studio is in a converted 1930s grocery store in the Coronado historic district of downtown Phoenix, just three blocks from the hospital where he was born. Hanging on the walls, are works by his favorite

artists, including Maynard Dixon. Mell says “I work from nature.... Seeing the real thing has much more impact than a photographic

representation of nature, so in order to duplicate nature, I like to

push it a little further and bring back some of the impact that

nature has in real life.”

Ed Mell

a 7135 E. Main Street | Scottsdale, AZ 85251 | Tel:800.835.0075 | jcgltd.com

Joan Cawley Gallery

Desert Son

Ed Mell

Reprinted courtesy of Western Art Collector

March 2008

Arizona powerhouse of creative talent, Ed Mell, invites us into his studio for a preview of his

new work.

Ed Mell, and his wife Rose Marie, and Ed's 1982 Corvette convertible staged against his 30" x

60" painting Paria Cliffs

“ I was born two miles to the south and went to high school two miles that way,” says Ed Mell,

pointing past the cactus-lined wall of his downtown Phoenix studio and towards a quickly

descending sky of dark clouds, bringing with it a threat of rain.

“This is where I’m from.”

Ed Mell’s studio, set in a turn of the century mission-style converted grocery store, is both

literally and figuratively located directly in the heart of his art. Surrounded by the things he loves

– and collects rigorously – paintings and drawings by Maynard Dixon, Mexican prints, vintage

cars and streamlined vintage toy cars, art books, photographs, 1950s dioramas, sculptures by

Emery Kopta, a drawing by Thomas Hart Benton, Mells’s studio presents a look inside the mind

of Arizona’s favorite son and most famous painters of mesas, canyons and desert skies.

Ed Mell, Vermillion Cliffs , Oil on Canvas, 20" x 40"

“My influences are probably from the past, but I’m putting my own spin on it towards the

future,” says Mell. “I’m influenced by a huge, broad gamut of painters, from European

Modernists to American Modernists, to the Taos Founders and then Maynard Dixon. And, even

different people who have painted the West and are unknown but I’ve found some work by them

and become inspired by it.”

Dixon’s name is mentioned like that of an old friend. Mell and Dixon are mentioned in the same

breath commonly in the art world and, in 1985, the then named Dewey Gallery in Santa Fe

hosted an exhibition titled Past and Present: Images of the Southwest by Maynard Dixon and Ed

Mell. Several years ago, Mell purchased Dixon’s painting, Smoky Morning, Virgin Valley, NV,

1927, which is now displayed in the living room of the home he shares with his wife Rose Marie.

But the Dixon influence extends much further than just an appreciation of his painting style.

On the easel are examples of Mell's more abstract paintings

“I became aware of Maynard Dixon fairly early in my painting career and at a time when I was

doing more minimal work,” says Mell “I saw him and he blew me away because he did things

already that I had only imagined doing with my art at that time. Early on, I met Dixon’s last wife,

Edith Hamlin, who was a painter too as well as his son John Dixon and I arranged a helicopter

flight for them because she wanted to go where her and Maynard had painted together.”

The trip is still a major milestone in Mell’s art career.

A new lithograph for Vermillion Cliffs, for details and to purchase, click here.

“It was a beautiful experience,” says Mell. “I remember one part where we landed on a beach in

the upper Verde River and she got out and started talking about their life together. She loved the

trip and gave me one of his drawings in appreciation of the trip.”

The drawing was the first of several original Dixon drawings and paintings that have found their

way into Mell’s private collection.

Mell and his wife Rose Marie have been married for three years.

“He deals with the dynamic design of nature,” says Mell. “And I do that in may own way, too.

It’s a simplicity of things and just the dynamic energy of natural forms.”

Mell’s pure love of looking and love of design – which began when he was a child and dreamed

of becoming an automobile designer – is really the inspiration to both the paintings and

sculptural work that he seems to be either thinking about or working on every single moment he

spends in the studio.

Mell seated in front of one of his most prized possessions, a 1927 Maynard Dixon painting titled

Smoky Morning Virgin Valley Nevada.

“I’m always looking for something fresh, something I haven’ seen and that strangely enough

always seems to come from the past,” says Mell. “The more you explore, the harder it is to find

new guys you don’t know about, but occasionally something comes up. I look at their work, see

how they put things together, and then it might trigger something in me. Sometime, it’s easy to

get stagnant. Staying fresh is a job in its own right and I just want to turn it into fun, into the

adventure of finding something new”

Always a lover of well-designed objects, Mell is a classic car buff, participates each year in the

Phoenix Art Museum’s Copperstate 500 and owns two vintage cars – a 1941 Buick and a 1982

Corvette convertible. While both cars suffice for Sunday drives with his wife of three years,

Rose Marie, the Corvette is one of his most prized-possessions and he has held on to it now for

over twenty years.

Mell's downtown Phoenix studio.

“It’s the art of the car, at least as much as the performance that interests me,” says Mell. “I

wanted to be a car designer when I was a kid and I’ve always loved the design of automobiles.

The tow pieces I have are based on the style of things. I also still kick myself for selling my ’36

Desoto Airflow Coupe. It was one of the very first stream lined American cars.”

Parked in front of his studio, the Corvette currently provides an occasional distraction for Mell as

he prepares for his newest one-man show at the Overland Gallery in downtown Scottsdale. This

show will showcase his diverse range of painting styles and genres and will include his

traditional landscapes, his more abstracted landscapes, several figurative pieces, some cactus

blossoms, and, of course, those desert skies that Mell is so famous for.

For details and to purchase this Ed Mell book, click here.

Don Haggerty, in his 1996 book, Beyond The Visible Terrain: The Art of Ed Mell, describes

those landscape paintings perfectly. Haggerty writes:

“Embedded on canvas, watercourses meander as curves toward the skyline, buttes and mesas lie

jumbled about the terrain, and rock spires reach skyward, erect like galleons in fleet, prepared to

skirt slopes and sail over the horizon. Clouds arch and billow over the land, their definable

shadows a counterpoint to the landscape. Like the topography, the clouds seem constructed by

ancient gods, their shapes companions to the landforms below.”

Mell and his wife Rose Marie at one of his art openings.

Mell sees the two distinct styles of landscape painting as being intimately connected and

dependent upon each other.

“What happened is that the more angular work evolved into a more natural style and at a point

I’ll revisit the angular work in more abstracted way,” says Mell. “ I paint in two different styles,

these landscapes. I like the discipline of painting realistic landscapes and doing abstracted stuff is

in most cases more imaginary.”

Mell started painting flowers in the late 80s. The cactus blossoms came not longer after that and

also serve as a way to keep the energy flowing in the studio at all times.

The sitting room includes drawings by Maynard Dixon and Thomas Hart Benton.

“It’s liberating,” says Mell. “Like you are using different parts of your creativity and then one

gets tired and you can move on and do something you haven’t done in awhile. I started painting

the flowers in general to have a different palette and deal with something completely opposite of

a broad landscape, a macro look at a flower and probably just from needing something fresh to

do. I put a couple in the gallery and all of a sudden I found another audience.”

At the end of the day, Mell is a painter who is completely in love with every aspect of the

painting process. He is prolific and unrelenting, painting as if he is on a mission and not wanting

to miss a single moment with the stuff. Mell’s wife, Rose Marie, talks about accompanying Mell

for a relaxing weekend at their home in Prescott, Arizona, about two miles outside of Phoenix,

only to have it turn into another weekend in the studio.

Ed Mell, Time and Spirit, Oil on Canvas, 24" x 24"

“He has a studio up there as well,” says Rose Marie. “And, we’ll go up there to relax and at the

end of the weekend, I’ll look over and he has seven or eight new studies completed and he’s

taking them back with us.”

For Mell, the studies are the key. His studio is packed with small compositional and color studies

done on linen on board that Mell continually refers back to and uses to plan the larger pieces.

A day of shooting at Mell's studio. From left to right: Joshua Rose, editior of Western Art

Collector, Rose Marie Mell, Ed Mell, Terri Dodd, editor-in-chief of Western Art Collector,

Mell's studio assistant Kenny Richardson and photographer Jeff Newton.

“To me, developing a painting starts out as a small idea you rough out and then I might do a

second study before moving on to the larger painting,” says Mell. “They are important because

that’s where you figure out everything out. I always keep them around and they are always so

easy to have at hand.”

Mell’s latest work for his new exhibition also seems to have more figurative work than past

shows.

“I feel that in my figurative pieces, I’m pushing the abstraction,” says Mell. “I found a new

language with my abstraction and I’m enjoying seeing where that will take me. Each one starts

out as a small study and they invent themselves as I’m working through them. Exploring is

exhilarating, as I’m always trying to find something new and fresh in this world. It’s hard

because a lot’s been done.”

Ed Mell

Ed Mell, Grand Canyon, Arizona

Born in 1942, Ed Mell spent an idyllic childhood in what was then the small western city of Phoenix. He

attended Art Center College of Design in Los Angeles, and soon after graduation accepted a position in New

York as an art director for a large advertising agency.

Seeking greater artistic freedom,he opened an illustration studio and met with immediate success, establishing

his national reputation. Still, Mell felt that he hadn't yet found his voice as an artist.

Ed Mell, Cloud Storm, Oil on Canvas, 22" x 22"

Seeking a break from the city's pace, he accepted a teaching position the Hopi reservation in 1970. Time spent

on Arizona's Colorado Plateau reconnected Mell with the land he loved and his artistic course was set. He

relocated to Phoenix and began painting his well-known landscapes.

Ed Mell, Grand Canyon, Arizona

Mell's creative drive has led him to produce bronze sculptures and print series in addition to his oils. Ed Mell's

work is found in many public and private collections including those of Tri-Star Pictures, Phoenix Art

Museum, Kartchner Caverns State Park, Diane Keaton, Arnold Schwartzenegger, and Bruce Babbitt.

Ed Mell, Surrounding Storm, Oil, 40" x 40"

Selected Highlights from the Career of Ed Mell

Corporate Collections Atlantic-Richfield Corporation, Los Angeles, California

Bank One, Phoenix, Arizona

Loew's Ventana Canyon Resort, Tucson, Arizona

Mountain Bell, Denver, Colorado

Tri-Star Pictures, Hollywood, California

U-Haul Corporation, Phoenix, Arizona

Public Collections City of Glendale, Glendale, Arizona

City of Scottsdale, Scottsdale, Arizona

Phoenix Art Museum, Phoenix, Arizona

Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art, Scottsdale, Arizona

Kartchner Caverns, Southern Arizona

Private Collections Forbes Collection

Mr. & Mrs. Bruce Babbitt, Washington, DC

Craig & Barbara Barrett, Phoenix, Arizona

Mr. & Mrs. Joseph Coors, Golden, Arizona

Stephane Janssen, Scottsdale, Arizona

Arnold Schwarzenegger, Los Angeles, California

Diane Keaton, Beverly Hills, California

Exhibitions 1982 Center of Modern Art, Guadalajara, Mexico

1983 Long Beach Museum of Art, Long Beach California

1984 The Nickolas Museum, Casper, Wyoming

1987 The Rockwell Museum, Corning, New York

1990,1996 Scottsdale Center for the Arts, Scottsdale, Arizona

1988, 2000 Museum of the Southwest, Mesa, Arizona

1996, 2000 Kolb Studio, Grand Canyon, Arizona

2002 Phippen Museum, Prescott, Arizona

2003 Northern Arizona Unviersity Museum, Flagstaff, Arizona

2006-2007 Grand Canyon: From Dream to Icon, Tucson Museum of Art, AZ

2007 Arizona: A Millennium of Arizona Art, Mark Sublette Medicine Man Gallery, Tucson, AZ

2009- Grand Canyon Modern Masters Invitational, Kolb Studio, Grand Canyon, AZ

2010 Ed Mell, New Works, Mark Sublette Medicine Man Gallery, Tucson, AZ

2010 Ed Mell: Paintings of the New West, Tucson Museum of Art, AZ

2010 The Rockwell Museum of Western Art, New York

2010 Museum of Northern Arizona, Flagstaff, AZ

2011 Book Museum of Western Art, Atlanta, GA

Books and Publications

ArtBook of the New West Beyond the Visible Terrain, The Art of Ed Mell, Northland Publishing

Experience AZ

The Majesty of the Grand Canyon

Leading the West, Northland Publishing

Luxe Magazine

Smithsonian National Magazine of the American Indian

Southwest Art Magazine

Arizona Highways Magazine

Western Art Collector

Western Interiors and Design

Who's Who in American Art

Ed Mell, Grand Canyon, Arizona

Ed Mell: Exploring the Southwest Through New Eyes

Reprinted courtesy of Southwest Art By Lynn Pyne Davis

In an Ed Mell painting, cotton ball clouds and rocky mountains often undergo a

metamorphosis, becoming simplified forms with knife-sharp edges. A rose or cactus

bloom may take on a colossal scale, with crystalline petals resembling shards of stained

glass. Pink buttes may be rendered as deep coral rose, and blue-gray rain may appear as

blue sapphires. By deviating from reality, Mell succeeds in creating a feeling that is

closer to the actual experience of witnessing nature first-hand than any photograph.

"I work from nature, and sometimes I push it a little further," Mell says. "Seeing the real

thing has much more impact than a photographic representation of nature, so in order to

duplicate nature, I like to push it a little further and bring back some of the impact that

nature has in real life."

Ed Mell, Rain Spears, Grand Canyon, Oil on Canvas, 24" x 32"

The Southwest lends itself particularly well to Mell's approach, since the region is

renowned for dramatic sunsets and storms that can deliver dazzling light shows. Some of

the Arizona artist's canvases depict recognizable sites such as the Grand Canyon,

Monument Valley, and Lake Powell, while others are only loosely inspired by actual

locations. Of the latter, Mell says they are invented from fantasy mood, vague

recollections and impressions that come from the visual store-house of images he has

absorbed through the years.

"There are certain moods to the landscape, and sometimes that's the main focus, to

capture a modd rather than an actual depiction of (a place)," he says. "A lot of my more

abstracted landscapes just kind of invent themselves as they go. Sometimes they're based

on a sketch, or sometimes I'll just sit down and put a few lines on a board and let them

suggest something and see where it goes. Some kind of invention happens, almost like

autopainting, but in a calculated way. Once you have enough confidence that you're not

nervouse about where it will go you can have freedom and fun with it."

Ed Mell, Flat Mesa, Lithograph 34/100, 22" x 30"

Mell's habit of embracing variety in his style, subjects, and media keeps him fresh and

challenged. Stylistically, he moves fluidly between the polar opposites of realism and

abstraction, but never goes completely in either direction. One of the distinctive qualities

in Mell's work is that he distills the complexities of nature into essential geometric forms

- to a greater or lesser degree depending on the painting. On the other hand, no matter

how abstracted, his subjects always remain recognizable. Mell's subject matter mainly

consists of landscapes and florals, but the artist also paints cattle, horses and cowboys on

occasion. And though oil painting is his primary medium, he has been sculpting since the

mid- 1980's. In 1993 he completed Jack Kife, a monumental sculpture of a cowboy on a

bucking bronco that now greets visitors to downtown Scottsdale, Arizona. Currently

Mell is working on another major public project, a 40-inch bronze sculpture of the

mythical phoenix bird for the Phoenix Sister Cities Commission.

Besides finding variety enjoyable, Mell makes use fo it to generate a visual dialogue in

which he can explore ideas that will surface later in another style, subject or medium. For

instance, many of the artist's friends thought his paintings of flowers - which started in

1998 witha batch of pink gladiolas from a local nursery - were a fleeting diversion.

However, Mell continued painting them, and a rainbow array or roses and crimson and

yellow cactus blooms now thrive in his studio. The floral paintings are an important

focus of this work and have corss-polinated ideas by introducing a new palette of oclors

into his landscapes.

Mell makes reference to the floral and landscape palettes in a separate discussion of the

translucency and the inner glow that are trademarks of his paintings. "Contrasts are what

make things come alive," Mell says. "For example, if you do a yellow flower and you put

in a dark purple background, which is the opposite on the color wheel, that color makes

the yellow come alive more than any other color. Plus, you're dealing with light that

illuminates the flower. So you have two things going for you to create a glow."

Several of his landscapes likewise, have deep purple clouds against patches of mustard

yellow sky. "I just sort of invented this color scheme, but I'm sure it's out there," he says.

"I don't recall ever seeing a purple sky like that, but then again, you've got this purple

against yellow and it kind of makes it work. And you can tell it is casting purple light on

the land."

Mell makes his studio in a converted 1930's era grocery store in the Coronado

historic district of downtown Phoenix, just three blocks away from the hospital where he

was born in 1942. The studio reflects the artist's varied interests and his penchant for

collecting. Hanging on the walls are a sampling of his works by his favorite painters,

including Maynard Dixon, Alonzo "Lon" Megargee, Thomas Hart Benton, Frank Tenny

Johnson, Jimmy Swinnerton, and Richard Lillis. Visitors entering through the back door

of the studio first encounter a gleaming black 1936 DeSoto Airflow coupe. He also owns

a 1962 Corvette which he drives every year in the Phoenix Art Museum's road rally fund

raiser.

Automobiles have been a passion all his life. Mell's boyhood hobby was building model

cars and doing pencil and water color sketches of cars which led to drawings of other

subjects. After high school, he studied advertising and illustration at the Art Center

College of Design in Los Angeles. In 1967, Mell accepted a job as a junior art director at

a major New York advertising firm, but iwithin a year he became disillusioned, feeling

his creativity was being smothered. He and a friend opened their own illustration firm in

New York and became very successful, with clients of the caliber of Cheerios and RCA.

Even so, three years later Mell still found life as a New York Illustrator to be repetitious

and unfulfilling.

"I saw those guys living the dream, but it wasn't my dream," he says. "It was a great

education, but it wasn't where I wanted to stay."

Mell accepted an offer to teach art classes one summer on the Hopi Reservation in

northern Arizona, and the experience awakend a yearning to return to his roots. "Looking

at the landscape with a fresh eye, all of a sudden there seemed to be a real magic to it," he

recalls. "You have to go away sometimes to be able to appreciate it."