Merrill Mahaffey is a noted Southwestern landscape artist who paints the open, unpopulated, and rugged landscapes of Arizona, Utah, and New Mexico. His imagery ranges from postcard-type views of mountains and canyons, to more abstracted studies of jumbled rock slides, to simple but elegant recordings of major public works like Hoover Dam.

His characteristic high-key palette consists of yellows, tans, pinks, and whites, with pale purple and blue shadows. He spends much of his energy on the rhythmic patterns in the colored rock walls, and in the reflections of bodies of water, usually tamed rivers.

Source: AV Fine Arts

Born in Albuquerque , Merrill Mahaffey grew up in Colorado, completed his formal art education in California and Arizona, and has explored and painted the American west the whole time. Starting out at Sacramento State, Mahaffey was counseled by a slightly older artist to go to the Bay Area if he wanted to be a painter more than a teacher.

After a year in this cutting-edge environment, Mahaffey returned to Sacramento State. He made periodic museum and gallery excursions back to San Francisco. Mahaffey considers this period and these places the source for his philosophy as a painter. Later as an art teacher at Phoenix College, Mahaffey defined the goal of his first sabbatical succinctly: "I will learn how to draw." Disciplined study and practice of penmanship, straight lines, circles, and the representation of three dimensions on the two-dimensional plane during this phase gave him the mastery to merge realism with his modernist spirit. "Why not do real paintings of real places with these new skills?" he asked.

Now some four decades later, a partial listing of Mahaffey's institutional collectors includes the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of Art, the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center , the Denver Art Museum , the Phoenix Art Museum , and the Utah Museum of Fine Arts. His corporate collector's include companies like Exxon, Phillips Petroleum and Phelp's Dodge, all entities with intense interest in geology, and partly because of artist's like Mahaffey, an ever increasing awareness of the need to respect what is sacred about the land in all of our involvements with it.

Mahaffey's oeuvre is a link between aesthetic and environmental concerns. He bridges realism with fractal modernism in an ever-evolving style that reflects the highest standards of craftsmanship, exploration and invention. The viewer in search of beauty, intelligence, relevance and originality in both concept and technique will find it all and more in Merrill Mahaffey's vision.

Education:
Arizona State University - M.F.A.
California College of Arts and Crafts
Sacramento State College - B.A.
Mesa College - Grand Junction, CO

Public Commissions and Awards:
Federal District Court - Denver, CO
Chandler Fine Arts Center - Chandler, AZ
Colorado State Legislature - Denver, CO
Skyharbor International Airport - Phoenix, AZ
Artist in Residence - Rocky Mountain National Park

Solo Exhibitions:
The Chandler Center for the Arts and the Chandler Arts Commission "Merrill Mahaffey The Artists Perspective: 50 Years in the West-2010
Museum of Northern Arizona/Retrospective - Flagstaff, AZ 2008
Duley-Jones Gallery - Scottsdale, AZ 2006-2008
Skyharbor International Airport - Phoenix, AZ 2004
Vanier Gallery - Tucson, AZ 2003
Palm Springs Desert Museum - Palm Springs, CA 2000
Suzanne Brown Gallery - Scottsdale, AZ 1991-2000
Elaine Horwitch Galleries - Scottsdale, AZ 1982-1991
Charlene Cody Gallery - Santa Fe, NM 1998
Maclaren Markowitz Gallery - Boulder, CO 1991-2000
Montana Art Gallery Directors Association Touring Exhibition - 1993
Chandler Fine Arts Center - Chandler, AZ 1992
University of Utah - Salt Lake City, Utah 1987
Museum of the American West - Houston, TX 1985
Fishbach Gallery- New York City, NY 1985
Meredith Long Gallery - Houston, TX 1984
Colorado Springs Fine Art Center - Colorado Springs, CO 1983
Tucson Art Museum - Tucson, AZ 1982

Group Exhibitions:
2nd Annual Grand Canyon Celebration of Art-Kolb Studio, Grand Canyon Village 2010
Eiteljorg Museum Invitational - Indianapolis, IN 1992
Sherry French Gallery - New York City, NY 1991
Jan Cicero Gallery - Chicago, IL 1991
Rocky Mountain National Park, 75th Anniversary Exhibition - 1990
Boundless Realism/Rockwell Museum - Corning New York 1987
R.A.F.T. Exhibition/Scottsdale Center for the Arts - Scottsdale, AZ 1984
Denver Art Museum - Denver, CO 1979
SW Museums Loan Collection/V.P. Mondale's Residence - Washington D.C. 1978

Selected Collections:
Arizona State University
Arizona Supreme Court
Bernalillo County Court - Albuquerque, NM
Burton Barr Public Library
Colorado Springs Fine Art Center
Colorado State Legislature
Denver Museum of Art
EXXON
Guinness Beer
Hughes Aircraft
IBM Corporation
Metropolitan Museum of Art
Phillip Morris Corporation
Phillips Petroleum Company
Phoenix Art Museum
Robert Redford
Sandra Day O'Connor
Smithsonian Institution - Museum of American Art
Tucson Art Museum
University of Arizona
University of Utah Museum
U.S. District Court - Denver, CO

Publications:
The Contemporary West - Patricia Broder
Merrill Mahaffey Monumental Landscapes - Rudy Turk
Places of the Spirit, Canyon de Chelly - Donald J. Hagerty
Arizona Highways
Art in America
Art Week
ARTnews
Newsweek
Scottsdale Magazine
Southwest Profiles

Miscellaneous:
Painting Juror - National Endowment for the Arts 1989
Instructor - Phoenix College
Instructor - Taos Art School
Instructor - Santa Fe Community College

Source:
merrilmahaffey.com with the artist's permission

Merrill Mahaffey was born in 1937 in Albuquerque, New Mexico. By the age 8 he was already creating color pencil drawings of landscapes near his family home in Grand Junction, Colorado.

His college training includes: Mesa Junior College in Grand Junction, Colorado; California College of Arts and Crafts, Oakland; Sacramento State University, California where he earned his Bachelor of Art degree in 1959; and Arizona State University where he received his Master of Fine Arts Degree in 1965.

Mahaffey taught design and art history at the Phoenix College from 1967 until 1983. His reputation as a landscape painter in Arizona began developing in the early 1970's. His work has evolved from an earlier abstract style to his present realism, reflecting the best traditions of American landscape painting.

With lithography and serigraphy, Mahaffey maintains the same expansive, panoramic quality found in his paintings, rendering certain basic yet complex abstract relationships in nature with the visionary technique that is uniquely his own.

His awards have been numerous: Colorado State Fair, Arizona State Fair, Southwestern Fiesta Biennial Exhibition, 10th Arizona Annual, Four Corners Biennial at the Phoenix Art Museum, Tucson Art Museum and the Scottsdale Center for the Arts.

His art has been shown at the Denver Art Museum and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. His painting "Toroweap" is in the Museum of American Art at the Smithsonian in Washington, D.C.

Articles have been published about Mahaffey in publications including Southwest Art, Southwestern Art, Art in America, Art Week, Phoenix Magazine, and Arizona Highways. Northland Press published a book about him titled "Monumental Landscapes" by Rudy Turk, with a forward by Arizona's Governor Bruce Babbitt.

Mahaffey's largest commission was given by the City of Phoenix for a 7-by-20 foot painting titled "Panorama From Bright Angel Point". It is displayed at the International Sky Harbor Airport terminal.