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Coming from a third generation ranching family Howard Post grew up working on the family ranch near Tucson, Arizona. When he was 17, he became a championship rodeo rider and continued to rodeo for years. Earning a BFA and an MFA in art, he became a full time artist in 1970 and has won numerous awards for his work. Post’s paintings are stylized and yet minimal with a sepia palette of tonal oranges, browns, blues and greens. His portrayal of the region and of a western lifestyle is informed by his long heritage and the aerial perspective seen in many of his paintings seems to come from a deep memory of place.
Howard Post will be a featured artist at the Medicine Man Gallery in Tucson on Saturday, March 3rd from 12 to 2pm and the exhibition will be up until May 1st, 2012.
Howard Post, The Far Side, c. 2011, 49.5 x 59.5 in. (framed). Credit: Medicine Man GalleryHoward Post, Losin’ the Shade, c. 2011, 30 x 24 in. (framed). Credit: Medicine Man Gallery Related Posts:
The painting Moving Cattle is typical of the unusual aerial perspective and bold shadows found in much of Howard Post’s work. Raised on a cattle ranch near Tucson, his paintings are narratives of life and labor on a working ranch.
Credit: With permission of the artist
Howard Post (1948 - ), Moving Cattle, c. 2006, oil on canvas, 43 x 55 in.
James Swinnerton created the “Little Jimmy” comic strip in 1903. It was featured until 1958 making it the longest running comic created by the same artist. After leaving New York to recover from tuberculosis in California, he relocated to the west coast and began painting in the desert southwest.
James (Jimmy) Swinnerton, (1875 – 1974) Quaking Aspen, Flagstaff, Arizona, n.d., 24 x 20 in. Credit: Santa Fe Art Auction
Ed Mell is one of the most ingenious and successful artists working in the West today, but like most people, Mell’s career path wasn’t evident early on. After graduating, he moved to New York City to work as a graphic designer and within two years launched his own company, Sagebrush Studios, which became an immediate success with such well-known clients as Cheerios and RCA.
Ed Mell is represented by both the Overland Galery (in Scottsdale) and Medicine Man Gallery (in Tucson and Santa Fe). The above video was shot in Medicine Man Gallery.
Photograph of Gary E. Smith (standing) and Ed Mell. Courtesy of Larry Clarkson.
Preferring the West, Mell returned to his hometown, Phoenix, Arizona in 1973. He worked part time as an illustrator and part time developing his painting skills into what would become a unique and recognizable style. By 1978 he had become a full time artist creating paintings that moved between hard edged representation and much more abstract work; always with the familiar angles and edges. By choosing to paint a broken terrain, he has naturally cubed the landscape by dividing the images in his work into small multiple areas.
Mell told Southwest Art Magazine: “I work from nature, and sometimes I push it a little further…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.”
Like the Cubists, Mell has taken natural forms—clouds, sky, rain, lighting, cliffs, buttes and canyons—and ‘analyzed’ them for reinterpretation into geometric forms. His work also resonates with elements of chaos theory and the study of approximate fractals in which patterns in nature appear identical at different scales; the repeating motifs are easily found in natural formations such as clouds, mountain ranges, lightning and river networks.
Fractals seem more evident, more repetitive in a cubist interpretation of nature. In both Wingate Cliffs and Canyon, Light and Rain the canyons and bluffs are often connected by long cylinders representing shafts of light, rain or lightning—emphasizing the interconnection of the elements.
“…there are certain moods to the landscape, and sometimes that’s the main focus, to capture the mood rather than an actual depiction of [a place]…Some kind of invention happens, almost like auto-painting, but in a calculated way. Once you have enough confidence that you’re not nervous about where it will go you can have freedom and fun with it.”
Thursday, February 23, 2012 at 10:10PM Tweet 
Howard Post, The Far Side, c. 2011, 49.5 x 59.5 in. (framed). Credit: Medicine Man Gallery
Howard Post, Losin’ the Shade, c. 2011, 30 x 24 in. (framed). Credit: Medicine Man Gallery Related Posts:
