Hold on to What is Good

French painter Mark Maggiori found his artistic home far from Europe, in the deserts and open ranges of the American West. Drawn to the cowboy life and the storytelling style of early twentieth century Western artists, he built a whole body of work around riders, horses, and wide skies. In this piece a young man sits calmly atop a white horse, wrapped in a pale blanket, taking a quiet pause in a field of sagebrush as the sun sinks low.

The sky is really the star of the show. Enormous clouds pile up behind the mountains, glowing with warm orange and pink at the bottom while cooler shadows creep in above. Maggiori has become known for these dramatic cloudscapes, and he paints them with so much presence that they almost feel alive. Against all that motion overhead, the stillness of the horse and rider creates a gentle, hopeful mood that fits nicely with the painting's title, "Hold on to What is Good."