Thunderhead Riders 2016

Mark Maggiori, born in 1977, made this painting called Thunderhead Riders with oil paint. Look at the way the light seems to burst from the clouds. It feels like Maggiori is trying to capture a moment of pure energy. There's something about the texture of the paint here that gets me. It’s not trying to hide itself. You can see the strokes, the way the brush moved across the canvas to create the highlights on the clouds and the rough texture of the landscape. Look at how the figures of the riders are caught in a kind of amber light that casts deep shadows. It's like he's saying that the process of painting itself is part of the subject. This work reminds me a little bit of Frederic Remington's paintings of the Old West. Both artists are interested in capturing a specific time and place, but where Remington goes for realism, Maggiori leans into this feeling of heightened drama and emotion. For Maggiori, like for all of us artists, painting is this ongoing conversation, always changing, never quite settled.