photo #6703039

The sky over America’s Colorado Plateau features in the 2016 oil painting Behind the Clouds by contemporary artist Ed Mell. Backlit Cumulonimbus and Cumulus congestus clouds are rendered with the same heft and colours as the massive eroded mesas and buttes of Arizona below. Dense shafts of rain join skyscape to landscape with streaks across the glowing amber void from cloud base to cap rock. Distant convective clouds in the sunset colours mirror the sandstone rocks. Reminiscent of the Arizona state flag, cloud shadows cast across the sky as radiating bands of light and shade known as crepuscular rays.Born in 1942 in Arizona, Ed Mell studied in Los Angeles and worked as a commercial artist in advertising in New York. He returned to the landscapes of the American Southwest, the Colorado Plateau and Sonoran Desert, when in 1973, he shifted focus from commercial to fine art. His paintings often feature huge storm clouds towering over the region’s arid terrain. Ed passed away this February in Phoenix, Arizona. He said in 2022, ‘There’s something about the desert sky that is magical. You can get lost in it.’Behind the Clouds (2016) by Ed Mell, courtesy of the Ed Mell Gallery. Mell’s quotation appeared in an April 26, 2022 feature on him in The Saturday Evening Post.