Arcadia is a place, either real or imagined,
where a person retreats to find solace, comfort and beauty

Arcadia is the name for an ancient region of Greece, where people lived in relative isolation from civilization. Because of this, Arcadians were said to have lived the quintessentially pastoral life. The modern definition of Arcadia is metaphorical: that of a place people yearn to go to find solace, comfort and beauty. We all have our Arcadias that we retreat to in our imagination or in reality.

This exhibition features visual expressions of Arcadian moments in the country side, in parks or in rural environments, captured by artists working in three diverse media--color prints, soft pastels and acrylics. Angela A'Court depicts scenes she observes of people, objects, birds and animals, rendered through a painstaking process of layering pastel colors to find moments of near musical harmony and compositional balance. James Isherwood appropriates the proverbial barn for his current work, exploring its angles, simple geometry and weight, meshed with a complex underpinning of a textured and abstracted landscape. Maria Passarotti’s large color prints show seemingly happened-upon scenes of mythic forests, waterfalls and western frontier towns. However, there is another narrative revealed as you look deeper: the forest is a manicured sculpture garden, the gushing waterfall, a curated view for tourists taken from a roadside platform and the frontier town a stage set, giving an ironic twist to the notion of idealistic beauty.

for more information and to see more works by the artists: click here