Arizona painter Ed Mell, has had a long history with the Owings Gallery in Santa Fe, New Mexico. So long that it nearly stretches through time to the very beginning of his career. 
Shades of a Storm, oil on linen, 30 x 44”
“Since 1981, all the way back to almost the start for me,” Mell says. “When I was first with them they were Dewey Gallery and then Owings-Dewey Gallery, and now Owings Gallery. I’ve always enjoyed showing with them because they show more modernist works, which has a long history in New Mexico. You build relationships and friendships over the years, so when you find people you like you stick with them.”
Mell is returning to Owings Gallery for a new show opening in August, continuing an every-other-year tradition of bringing new work to Santa Fe during the festive summer season. The Phoenix-based artist routinely slips between his abstracted and modernist landscape views to more realistic representations of the land. For the Owings show, since they have a history with modernism, Mell is excited to offer some of his more dramatic compositions that accentuate and exaggerate the geometric qualities of the desert. Many of the works will show the storms that can rapidly descend over the dusty valleys and sun-kissed peaks. 
El Luna Nueva, oil on linen, 20 x 40”
In Living Storm, he paints a storm’s majesty as it dances with the fading light of the day and patches of rain fall into the dry air, evaporating slowly above the ground. In Shades of a Storm the atmosphere creates a ferocious thunderhead that seems to kick and buck over the desert’s obscured features, an angry bronco in cloud form. 
Inner Glow, oil, 16 x 20”
“I enjoy painting storms because they are a form of abstraction,” Mell adds, “and they connect the land to the sky in really exciting ways.”
El Luna Nueva, a large 20-by-40-inch work, does not feature a storm, but it still draws its power from the sky, including a moonrise behind a distant peak. In the foreground, a saguaro cactus claws upward toward the top of the painting, creating a magnificent silhouette against the moon’s quiet brilliance. “I liked painting the atmosphere on that one,” the artist says. “It was fun to break up that full moon with the land and the cactus. It started as a study and just felt like it was working really well, so I just kept working on it and was really happy at the end.” —
Upcoming Show
Up to 15 works
Aug. 12-Sept. 17, 2021
The Owings Gallery
120 E. Marcy Street, Santa Fe, NM 87501,
(505) 982-6244, www.owingsgallery.com
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