Shown above is Mahaffey’s “Picket Post Mountain” mountain ⛰️ which is an acrylic on canvas. It appears he may have painted this during spring when precious desert 🏜️ rainfall permits delicate grasses and flowers to bloom briefly near the peak. Picket Post Mountain is located about 40 miles east of Phoenix overlooking the old historic mining ⛏️ town of Superior.
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I’m always eager to see whichever artists the Olney Gallery at Trinity Episcopal Church will feature each month. Landscape artists in particular are very appealing to me and I will be featuring a sampling of works by Merrill Mahaffey for this post. Born in Albuquerque, New Mexico in 1937 he first stated creating pencil drawings of landscapes around his family home in Colorado at age eight. Eventually, after attending colleges in Colorado and California he achieved his Master Of Fine Arts degree from Arizona State University in 1965.
Above is Mahaffey’s “Sharp Cornered Schist” vividly expressing the rugged, forbidding terrains typical of Arizona and other areas of the Southwest. Although the title card didn’t specify, he may have painted this along the Colorado River. In any case, I find it captivating!
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Mahaffey taught design and art history at Phoenix College from 1967 to 1983, but he was becoming known as a landscape painter by the early 1970s. He has collected many awards over the years ranging from state fairs in Colorado and Arizona to the Scottsdale Center For The Arts. One of the highest honors an artist can attain is to have any of their works displayed at the Smithsonian Museum in Washington D.C. Mahaffey has also achieved that coveted status with his painting “Toroweap” as part of the American Museum Of Art located there.
Pictured above is Mahaffey’s “Silver Corner Grotto” another acrylic on canvas creation. The subtle and detailed way he captures the reflection of the cliff on in the water is amazing to me.
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Numerous articles have been published about Mahaffey and his art in a variety of magazines including Arizona Highways , Phoenix Magazine, and Southwestern Art. A book about Mahaffey called Monumental Landscapes by Rudy Turk was published in 1979 and sounds like it would be quite the collectors item for anyone who enjoys paintings of Southwest scenes. For more information ℹ️ about Merrill Mahaffey visit these following websites:
http://Medicinemangalleries.com (this site contains numerous blogs and biographies of Mahaffey and other artists)
www.merrillmahaffey.com (on his personal site browsers can also connect to Facebook and Instagram to view more of his paintings 🎨)
lewallengalleries.com (this site based in Santa Fe, New Mexico features previous exhibitions of Mahaffey and other artists)
