Over the course of many decades, painter Ed Mell has been to about every nook and cranny in his home state of Arizona. And yet the search still continues for the things that drive him to paint day after day: vibrant light, dynamic compositions, dramatic weather and so much more. 
Storm Upsurge, oil on linen, 42 x 64"
“I guess I’ve seen about every corner of Arizona at this point. At the very least I’ve seen a helluva lot,” Mell says from his Phoenix studio. “And yet there’s still more out there for me to discover.”
The beauty of the Arizona desert—and the deserts of Colorado, Utah and New Mexico—is at the very heart of Mell’s studio, where he creates his modernist views of the desert Southwest. His latest show, which opens February 12, will take place at Mark Sublette Medicine Man Gallery in Tucson, Arizona. He will be showing as many as 15 new works, many of them in his iconic abstracted style. 
Crimson Drift, oil on linen, 15 x 30"
The artist recalls taking many trips around Arizona with TV news helicopter pilot Jerry Foster. With no traffic cruising at 150 mph, the trips would make travel around the state easy, but rarely did the two take direct flights. “We’d stop and look at everything,” Mell says. “We’d stop in Sedona, go to the top of the San Francisco Peaks, down into the Little Colorado or Havasupai [in the Grand Canyon], or even volcanic bowls, Lake Powell or the Four Corners area. The perspective was certainly different in a helicopter.”
Monumental Downpour, oil on linen, 24 x 24"
Mell remembers once stopping at the top of a mountain and discovering a Native American campsite against a rock wall under a ledge that had barely been touched in centuries. “And there was a pot just sitting there. It could have easily been 800 years old,” he says. “It was in such a remote area that for all I know it’s still sitting there even today. Other times we saw old storage bins. We didn’t open them, but you could just picture them still being full of corn.”
Western Gap 1, oil on linen, 18 x 24"
The artist, who also has a love of cars, participates in the Copperstate 1000, which allows him to see vast portions of the state from the road as well. The event often takes participants into out-of-the-way places, which also inspires Mell’s paintings.
“Just when you think you’ve seen it all, this state shows you something new,” he adds. —
Upcoming Show
Up to 15 works
Opens February 12, 2022
Mark Sublette Medicine Man Gallery
6872 E. Sunrise Drive, #103, Tucson, AZ 85750
(520) 722-7798, medicinemangallery.com
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