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Ed Mell was born in Phoenix, Arizona in 1942 and
started drawing as soon as he could hold a
pencil. Graduating from Phoenix Junior College
with an Associated Arts Degree, he enrolled in
The Art Center College of Design in Los Angeles
to pursue his interest in illustration. With this
training, he went to New York in 1968 to work as
an art director for a prominent advertising
agency. The following year, he opened up his
own illustration studio, Sagebrush Studios, in
Manhattan, serving some of the area's top
editorial and advertising clients such as
Cheerios and RCA. But success had its price,
and within three years the Arizona native was
struggling with the fast-paced New York lifestyle
and pressures of the advertising business. Mell
jumped at the opportunity to teach summer
classes in silk screening and drawing on the
Hopi Reservation at Hotevilla, Arizona. When
the summer session was complete, he took a
hard look at his future and decided to get
back to his Arizona roots. A few months later he
and Andrews closed Sagebrush Studios.
Mell returned to Phoenix in 1973 to continue his
commercial work in illustration, while painting
landscapes of the West on a part-time basis. By
1979 the demand for his fine art was great
enough to make the transition to working on his
fine art painting full-time. Working in oils, he put
his main emphasis on landscapes and subjects
that depict the West. By 1984 he had begun
creating bronze sculptures, and in the late
eighties, he applied his angular style to flowers
and Western figurative subject matter.
His works are included in many private and
corporate collections including the Forbes
Collection, Tri-Star Pictures, City of Scottsdale,
Kartchner Caverns State Park, Diane Keaton,
Arnold Schwartzenegger and Bruce Babbitt. He
is also well known for the posters he produced
for the Grand Canyon Chamber Music Festival.
He began producing these posters in 1985,
which was the Festival's second season.
His studio is in a converted 1930s grocery store in
the Coronado historic district of downtown
Phoenix, just three blocks from the hospital
where he was born. Hanging on the walls, are
works by his favorite artists, including Maynard
Dixon. Mell says "I work from nature.... Seeing the
real thing has much more impact than a
photographic representation of nature, so in
order to duplicate nature, I like to push it a little
further and bring back some of the impact that
nature has in real life."
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