Eye of the Storm

Additional Information

Provenance:
Scottsdale Art Auction, Scottsdale, AZ, 2014

Literature:
Beyond the Visible Terrain: The Art of Ed Mell, Donald J. Hagerty, Northland Publishing, Flagstaff, AZ, 1996: p. 107.

After several years working in New York City as an illustrator, Ed Mell returned to his home state to teach on the Hopi Reservation in Northern Arizona. It was there he began working on his own work for his eventual return to Phoenix. His paintings at the time were traditional scenes done in a more representational style. But as he refined his work further, the modernism he would soon be known for slowly revealed itself. It wasn’t long before he was doing two distinct styles of landscape painting: more realistic scenes with Mell’s contemporary forms and compositions, and then full-on abstracted paintings with fragmented shapes and only vague hints of realism in the landscape. Eye of the Storm, painted in 1992, is the rare Mell that has elements of each style in it, with a realistic landscape below his famous abstracted cloud forms. Mell did not name the location of the painting—some landscapes were invented by the artist—but it certainly was inspired by Arizona, where the painter was born and lived most of his life. Today, his paintings and sculptures are revered across the Southwest. After his passing in 2024, Mell’s monument Jack Knife on Main Street in Scottsdale became a tribute and memorial to the artist and his contributions to the art world.

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Please note that the first unframed photo is most accurate for color. Framed photographs are to show the frame and are not color corrected to the painting.

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