Literature: Western Art Collector, Michael Clawson, Scottsdale, AZ, February 2022: p. 82. Provenance: Medicine Man Gallery, Tucson, AZ, 2022 Private collectiom, Arizona While many artists have been strongly linked to Arizona—including Thomas Moran, Maynard Dixon and Philip C. Curtis—few have been embedded in the mythos and culture of the Grand Canyon State as deeply as Ed Mell. The painter was born in Arizona and, except for a brief period in New York City working as an illustrator, lived his entire life in the state. His work has appeared in and on the cover of Arizona Highways, was featured on Arizona’s Centennial stamp in 2012 and his monument Jack Knife stands at the center of the Scottsdale Arts District. His passing in February 2024 at the age of 81 received news coverage around the Southwest. Mell is known today for his abstracted landscapes of the Southwest, but his work was more representational when he started in the 1970s. As he traveled Arizona, sometimes by helicopter, he began to gravitate toward the unique light and forms that the desert offered. His later paintings could sway from realistic landscapes with slightly exaggerated renderings of the land to full-blown abstract works with clusters of shattered geometry that loosely interpreted into desert thunderstorms, dry river valleys and monolithic rock formations. Western Gap I, created just three years before he died, is representative of his more modern sensibilities.