Ed Mell, Evening Cast, oil on linen, 22 x 32”
Stephen C. Datz, Desert Rhythms, oil on canvas board, 30 x 36”
read books and good literature...[A]bove all
draw—draw—draw—and always from nature.”
Just two years later he was doing illustrations for
Overland Monthly. At just 18 years old, he was
fast on his way.
From then on Dixon was a force to be
reckoned with: early in his career he was the
top Western illustrator working, he and Ed
Borein rode through the Sierra Nevadas and
worked ranches in Oregon, he took important
commissions from the Santa Fe Railway,
befriended Native Americans in the Southwest
and in Montana, was married three times
(twice to artists: Dorothea Lange and Edith
Hamlin) and his work would come to define
the places he painted, namely Arizona, Utah
and Montana. Today his work is treasured
by collectors and envied by artists, and his
influence can be seen everywhere.
Mell, the Phoenix modernist whose
abstracted and geometric landscapes have,
like Dixon, come to define Arizona, says that
the artist has always been influential in his
studio. “My Southwest influences have run
the gamut from Arizona Highways magazine
to Raymond Jonson with Maynard Dixon
strongly placed in the middle. My first works,
modern and minimal landscapes, slowly