Cowboy at Sunset 2014

Mark Maggiori's "Cowboy at Sunset" looks like it was made with oils, and a whole lot of feeling. I imagine Maggiori layering those warm sunset colors over and over, each stroke building a sense of depth, of that vast Western landscape. You can almost feel the grit and heat of the desert air, right? I bet he was thinking about Frederic Remington, and all those artists who've tried to capture the myth of the West. Look how the light catches the cowboy's hat, like a halo. I'm curious about the darks. That horse seems solid, like a shadow, but then it's set against the fiery sunset. Painting is always about this back and forth, pushing and pulling. It reminds me of how we try to make sense of the world, always caught between what's solid and what's fleeting.