Vermillion Cliff Au Claire De Lune 2014

Curator: "Vermillion Cliff Au Claire De Lune," painted in 2014 by Mark Maggiori. It’s an incredible plein-air painting. What do you make of it? Editor: A desert…at night. That high sky. It feels exposed, eerily calm. That vast, turquoise wash… Is this loneliness, captured in pigment? Curator: The romantic solitude of the West, right? The geometry is pretty stark, the mesas, buttes, desert floor... The composition leads your eye, inevitably, up to that dreamy moon. Editor: Precisely. The moon. Ever since ancient civilizations mapped meaning into its cycles. It governs the night, yes, but also emotions, the subconscious. Lunar landscapes tap into that primal part of us. This desert becomes a stage for internal dramas, maybe? Curator: The artist's choice to paint it *en plein air*, under that very moonlight…adds another layer, I think. Trying to capture that transient moment. It’s bold. Editor: It nods to accuracy, but look at how that light infuses everything with unreality. Is it "realistic?" Debatable! Think about those pre-photography nocturnes, landscapes rendered using only blacks and greys, conjuring terror in sublime, wild landscapes. There’s some of that romantic fear of the unknown here. Curator: So, a little Turner in the desert? The sky does feel incredibly vast, almost overwhelming given that low horizon line. Editor: Perhaps. Symbols aren't stagnant; they evolve. The desert could equally speak of desolation, and a modern crisis of belonging. Curator: Absolutely. These symbols keep morphing on us, depending on our time, our headspace. Editor: And I was definitely seeing my headspace first there! Thank you for putting my lunar yearnings in check.