Arizona-based artist Ed Mell paints images of the Southwest, but Arizonans can get a little territorial when it comes to his works. The label “Southwest,” they would say, is too broad a term for an artist whose works are so representative of the Grand Canyon State’s unmatched beauty in light, color and form. He belongs to Arizona, they might argue.
Storm Tones, 2023, oil on linen, 28 x 22”
For Mark Sublette, owner of Medicine Man Gallery in Tucson, Arizona, Mell is very much an Arizona artist, but Sublette also goes a step further. “He does represent Arizona, but I also see him as a great American artist. Yes, he paints the Southwest, but so did Georgia O’Keeffe. No one sees her work and says, ‘She was a great Southwest artist,’” Sublette says. “Ed’s work is similar in that it is very modern and it can hang anywhere in the country, even in New York City. He fits into a broader and bigger classification.”
Sublette, who has represented Mell for a quarter century, will be hosting a new show by the artist on February 2 at the Southern Arizona gallery. Within the show will be a mixture of small works, including new and old paintings, as well as several of Mell’s famous bronzes.
Storm Rays, 2014, oil on board, 8 x 16”
“Because I have represented Ed for so long, it’s been interesting to watch the interest and recognition for his work evolve over time. He’s always had a hardcore following, no doubt about that, but that’s changed into something else in the last five years. Maybe that is because he’s become more iconic in many ways,” Sublette says. “He’s had a long career that has spanned 40 years or so, and that is also unique. But I think it comes down to contemporary representation of the West. He started that early on, even going back to 1978 and 1979 when he was doing these minimalistic, almost abstract landscapes before going into more traditional imagery. By the early 1990s, he had developed into more of a cubist. He’s had an exciting career, that’s for sure.”
Low Light Rain, 2016, oil on board, 12 x 16”
Works in the new show include Low Light Rain, which is more representational but still shows that famous Mell abstraction rendered into Arizona canyons, and then Storm Tones, which is so purely cubist that all the land and light are fragmented into jagged pieces torn apart by a desert storm. Storm Rays, from 2014, has bits of both—realism and abstraction—though it is concealed within powerful and vibrant color soaking into the sky from the last moments of the sun’s reign.
Rooster Cloud, 2018, oil on board, 10 x 10”
Mell’s “style,” often copied though never replicated, is still fresh for Sublette, who’s been looking at his work for 25 years. Mell has few equal contemporaries, he says, and art fans have to go back to Maynard Dixon, John Marin, Doel Reed and Marsden Hartley to find artists who contributed to Western art the way Mell is today. “He’s at ground zero for that movement,” the gallery owner says. He adds that collectors are on board and need little help understanding where Mell comes from or what he’s doing. “Generally speaking, everyone gets it. There was a point maybe 20 years ago when I had to explain his modern sensibility to people, or his abstraction or cubist forms in Western art. There was some education on my part. But now we don’t have to do that anymore. People know Ed and they understand what he’s doing.”
Untitled, oil on linen, 20 x 20”
The artist, who is incredibly modest about his work and his role in shaping contemporary Western art, has not only gained acceptance by collectors, but also at auctions, where his paintings have sold in the low six-figure range, and also at museums, where collections have benefitted from his paintings or bronzes. In recent years, Mell has shown at the Prix de West in Oklahoma City and the Masters of the American West in Los Angeles, two high-profile museum exhibitions. He’s also prolific, with fresh new paintings coming from his studio at a decent speed, and then followed by little side projects like hotel murals, whiskey labels, CD covers and set designs for stage plays.
Foothill Rainfall, 2012, oil on board, 8 x 10”
“I don’t know how he does it, because he operates on another level from some artists,” Sublette says. “He’s absolutely committed and dedicated to his work. He just really loves to create.” —
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