via MarkMaggiori.com
Mark Maggiori is a French born Los Angeles based painter classically trained at the renowned Academie Julian whose halls also produced the likes of Matisse, John Singer Sargent and Renoir.
Maggiori was moved by his first trip to America at the malleable age of 15. He, his uncle and cousin made their way from New York to San Francisco by car. The wide open expanses, majestic red rocks of monument valley, and rugged rocky mountains enchanted this otherwise skateboarding Parisian kid. The trip left an indelible imprint of America on him, this sweet memory forever in his imagination, inspiring him to return again to the land.
It was when he met his desert rose and muse, Petecia Lefawnhawk, a talented artist in her own right, that he gained deeper understanding of the west through her native eyes. He followed her across the country through several rolling ghost towns, including Chloride, Arizona, where she grew up. It was then that Maggiori decided he would drop everything he was doing, make an outpost in America and dedicate his life to documenting the American West.
Meticulous in focus, Maggiori embeds himself on the ranch among the cowboys during major round-ups, sleeping in a barn in the bunkhouse with the other hands.
His work skillfully plays with concepts of light and dark – the playful nostalgia of a child wild with dreams of cowboys juxtaposed against a brooding and deeply emotional palette. “He also paints sumptuous nocturnes that would make Frank Tenney Johnson proud—his blues sparkle, subtle shadows dance on the soil, and moonlit clouds balloon out over the desert floor.”* ( Western Art Collector. October 2015)
Mark provides an outsider’s view nestled inside the imaginations of Americans, envisioning for them the untamed nature of a west long since faded. (Western Art&Architecture, Oct 2015)