Video by Pam Stevenson, Agave Productions Inc., for Historical League
Ed Mell captures the spirit of Arizona in his art. Born and raised in Phoenix, Ed graduated from the Art Center College of Design in Los Angeles and worked as an illustrator in New York during the early 1970s. He remembers, “It was an exciting time, but I just started losing interest in it; the dream wasn’t quite there.”
His love of the Southwest landscape was awakened one summer while he was teaching art on the Hopi Reservation. “Going from New York City to the Hopi Reservation for two and a half months is when the wheels started turning and I started to see what I might do. There was such beauty here - the landscape, the people, the wide open spaces and the sense of freedom. It was still a little vague, but I thought I could bring something new to the landscape.”
In 1973, Mell returned to his roots in Phoenix and established a studio to continue his work with commercial illustrations. He also began painting landscapes, developing his distinctive style of depicting dramatic sunsets and storms over the mesas and canyon lands of Arizona. “I chose landscape because there’s infinite color and experimentation you can do with it.” By 1979, the demand for his art allowed him to work full time on his paintings.
Ed Mell also creates Western bronze sculptures. “It’s another discipline. When you’re tired of painting on a two-dimensional surface, it’s really nice to grab a piece of clay and see what you can make of it.”
In the late 1990s, he added bold floral paintings of cactus blossoms and flowers to his repertoire. “At a certain point, I just kind of started to feel a little bored with landscapes. I wanted to change my palette and perspective, so I started doing flowers. I think one of the fascinating things is the translucence of them, and I have enjoyed playing with the light coming through them.”
Ed Mell says the inspiration for his work comes from nature, which he interprets in a way that is both abstract and realistic. He captures the mood of the land, rather than depicting an actual place. “I eliminate a lot of unnecessary information in my work, trying to get down to the raw bones of it. It’s sort of what you remember in your mind, rather than what your eye really sees.”
Through his paintings, Ed Mell has captured the unique beauty of the Southwest and shared it with people around the world. He says, “Returning to Arizona was the best thing I ever did.”
Historymaker Ed Mell biography published in 2008
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