Emerald Sky

Two cowboys rest atop their horses, one on a chestnut brown and the other on a pale white mount, while a giant tower of clouds rises behind them and glows with the warm light of the fading day. The band of deep teal blue across the top of the sky gives this painting its name, "Emerald Sky," and it makes a striking contrast with the fiery oranges and golds that flood the rest of the scene. Below the riders, a field of desert brush bursts into color, so the whole landscape seems to hum with warmth even as the two men sit quietly, wrapped up in their own thoughts.

Mark Maggiori, the French artist behind this piece, came to the American West by an unusual path. He once played in a rock band and worked in film before he found his true calling painting cowboys, horses, and the enormous skies of the frontier. Those dramatic clouds have become his trademark, and here they do most of the talking while the riders stay perfectly still. Maggiori carries forward the tradition of earlier Western painters, yet his work feels modern and almost like a frame from a movie, capturing not the chase or the shootout but the long pause in between, when there is nothing to do but watch the sky change.