Ed Mell

Phoenix native Ed Mell studied at Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California, before moving to New York in 1967. There he worked as a Junior Art Director at an ad agency for about a year before opening his own firm, Sagebrush Studios, with a friend. Mell continued to work as an illustrator in New York until he decided to move back to Phoenix in 1973 after teaching summer art classes on the Hopi Reservation in Hotewilla, Arizona. After his return to the Southwest the artist began painting landscapes and by 1979 had given up illustration completely to pursue painting full time. He began approaching the Southwest landscape in a geometric abstract style, stripping the mesas and storm clouds he painted down to their raw angles. Mell added floral subjects to his repertoire in the 1990s and also works in bronze. He still lives and works in Phoenix, sometimes employing helicopter flights in his search for new landscapes.