A thousand miles from home

Massive clouds swell across the sky in this painting, catching a golden warmth that could belong to sunrise or sunset. Below them, the cliffs and mesas of the American Southwest stack up in bands of burnt orange and deep purple shadow. Down at the very bottom, easy to miss, a single rider crosses the plain on horseback. He is so small against the land that he almost disappears, and that tiny figure carries the entire meaning of the title. Being a thousand miles from home is not about distance so much as the feeling of open, endless space swallowing you up.

Mark Maggiori is a French painter who found his calling in cowboy country. Before picking up a brush full time, he played in a rock band, which makes his later devotion to Western landscapes a bit of a surprising turn. His paintings nod to earlier artists of the frontier such as Frederic Remington and Maxfield Parrish, and you can see that influence most clearly in his clouds, which he builds up like solid, sculpted forms. He is said to spend hours just watching skies, and here that patience pays off. The heavens feel as full of life as anything on the ground.

The quiet is really what carries this scene. Nothing dramatic happens. The rider simply keeps moving through a world far bigger than himself, and we are left to wonder where he is going and what he will find when he finally gets there.