Opening on Friday, September 18th, at the Jackson Center for the Arts in Jackson Hole, Wyoming is artist Mark Maggiori's extraordinary solo exhibition, "Rise of the Western Lights."

Opening during the Jackson Hole Fall Arts Festival and alongside JHAA’s 20th Annual Live Auction, the exhibition is Maggiori’s first solo presentation in three years. The show of 31 new works will be unveiled at the Center for the Arts and sold at auction.

The scale, timing, and significance of the presentation make it an extraordinary moment for collectors and admirers of Western Art, positioning Maggiori's exhibition as one of the largest and most anticipated gatherings of Western art ever presented.

Born in Fontainebleau, France, in 1977, Maggiori first encountered the American Southwest at age fifteen during a cross-country journey from New York to San Francisco. The experience left a lasting impression on the young artist and ultimately became the origin of his artistic focus.

Trained at Paris’s famed Académie Julian (Where a number of Taos Society artists also trained), Maggiori was simultaneously immersed in the world of music, serving as the lead vocalist, photographer, and music video director for the French rock band Pleymo, which achieved considerable success in France and abroad. This period exposed him to the visual language of photography, performance, graphic design, and cinema while he continued developing his skills as an artist.

After turning down a job with Disney, moving to the United States, and a brief stint as a filmmaker, he carried these numerous creative experiences into full-time painting, turning seriously toward Western subject matter in 2014 after a life changing chance visit to the National Cowboy Museum in Oklahoma City.

The influence of those earlier disciplines remains evident in his highly composed, cinematic approach to the landscape. Cowboys, Native American figures, horses, and expansive Southwestern environments become subjects through which he explores solitude, scale, atmosphere, and the enduring mythology of the American frontier.

His monumental skies and highly developed cloud formations have become a pop culture phenomenon, evolving into instantly recognizable images shared and celebrated by Maggiori’s enormous social media audience, with thousands of people now referring to cumulonimbus clouds simply as "Maggiori Clouds."

Mark's work has been exhibited at numerous prominent institutions, including the Briscoe Western Art Museum, the Eiteljorg Museum, the Autry Museum, and the Couse-Sharp Historic Site. Outside of the studio, he is a father to three daughters and is married to artist and designer Petecia Le Fawnhawk. He splits his time between residences in Taos, New Mexico, and Scottsdale, Arizona, and spends an additional two months of the year traveling through France and Italy.