Mark Maggiori
Waking Up the Ghosts
Whenever an artist moves, uprooting family and studio, there are bound to be changes in their creative output. But rarely are those changes as profound as they were for Mark Maggiori when he moved from Los Angeles to Taos, New Mexico, in early April, during the initial onset of the pandemic.
“It was a blessing and, honestly, one of the best choices I’ve made so far,” he says. “We have a big property, and I’m building my dream studio—it’s amazing here.”
There were other big changes in store for the French-born artist: While his studio was being built, he took an informal artist residency in Joseph Henry Sharp’s studio at the Cousesharp Historic Site and, like Sharp himself, Maggiori started working closely with the people of the Taos Pueblo and incorporating Native Americans in his work. His move to include figures that weren’t white cowboys came after a reflective, and at times painful, examination into how he represents the West within his paintings.
“I was always shy to paint Native Americans because I felt I needed to be with them, to meet them and to paint them where they were.
I couldn’t do that remotely from Los Angeles with no connection,” he says. “Around that time there was also a lot of things happening in the country, including the Black Lives Matter movement. I really started to question why I was painting only white cowboys. I was friends with them and surrounded by them, so it was easy for me, but I had to open my eyes.”
Around the time Instagram users were posting black screens to support Black Lives Matter, Maggiori told his followers he would not follow suit, not because he didn’t support the movement, but because he wanted his Instagram
feed to remain non-political. His followers—and he has 133,000 of them on Instagram—raked him over the coals. “They were screaming at me, and telling me my silence is worse,” Maggiori adds. “It was painful for me as I was thinking about it. I needed an answer.” By the next morning, he was painting Black cowboys. Not to pacify his rabid followers, but because he better understood he was in a position to accurately represent the people of the West. All people.
The move to Taos, Black Lives Matter, Native American subjects…it’s all encouraged Maggiori to paint an inclusive West, and even spawned its own hashtag, #Thewestofmanycolors. He also started using his large platform to support organizations he believed in, including the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, the Black Youth Project, Larry Callies’ Black Cowboy Museum and causes in Taos.
His new show—a by-draw online sale through Parsons Gallery of the West on September 26—will not only feature several Taos-themed works, but some of the proceeds will benefit the Taos Pueblo Day School, Taos Pueblo Oo-oo-nah Art and Cultural Center, and the Couse-sharp Historic Site for its continuing education outreach with the Taos Pueblo youth.
The gallery is located in Victor Higgins’ home and studio, which adds another layer to the history of Taos and its newest artist resident. “Here I am in the Sharp studio at the Cousesharp
Historic Site. Right now one my pieces is facing a Sharp piece, like they’re almost talking to each other,” Maggiori says. “It’s like we’re waking up the ghosts.”