A Letter from Home 2017

Mark Maggiori made this painting, *A Letter from Home*, with oil paint, and the way he's layered the paint makes me think about distance, like looking across a vast landscape. The mountains in the background, they’re not just scenery; they’re part of the story, painted in cool blues and grays that recede into the distance. I imagine Maggiori, out there in the landscape, feeling the light change as he paints. There are these cowboys on horseback, bathed in a warm, golden light, one is reading a letter. What's it say? Is it good news? Bad news? Painting is about telling stories, sure, but it's also about capturing a feeling, an emotion. The texture of the grass, the way the light hits the horses, it all adds up to this sense of being there, in that moment. It reminds me of other landscape painters, like the Hudson River School, who were all about capturing the grandeur of nature. But Maggiori is doing something different, he’s mixing that with a real, human story. It's like he’s saying, "Here’s this big, beautiful world, and here we are, trying to make sense of it all, one letter at a time."