Ed Mell

Born in 1942, Ed Mell spent an idyllic childhood in what was then the small southwestern city of Phoenix, Arizona. He started drawing at a very young age, inspired by automobiles and the futuristic design of the late forties and fifties. An interest in advertising and illustration led Mell to attend the Art Center College of Design in Los Angeles.

After college, Mell headed for New York and the world of advertising agencies. He began exploring illustration, becoming one of the first airbrush artists to emerge in the 1960s. Mell’s skill in this newly discovered medium led him to create two covers for National Lampoon.

In the early 1970s, after teaching art on the Hopi Reservation, Mell decided to return home to Arizona’s Sonoran Desert. He writes, “Spending months in that beauty right after being in the city was the catalyst that changed my artistic direction.” Back in Arizona, Mell’s first works in oil were very minimal and angular. He later began painting more naturalistic expressions of southwestern landscapes. Today, his work includes oil paintings and bronze sculptures.

Mell’s art is owned by the Phoenix Art Museum, the Tucson Museum of Art, and the Denver Art Museum, among others. His sculpture of a cowboy riding a bucking horse, Jack Knife, is a landmark in downtown Scottsdale, Arizona. Other public works include a painting for the Kartchner Caverns Visitor Center and a bronze of a rising phoenix for Phoenix City Hall. In 1996, Mell’s art was profiled in the Northland Press book, Beyond the Visible Terrain: The Art of Ed Mell. Mell’s first project for the Postal Service is Arizona Statehood (2012).