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COME BACK TO THE RIVER:

Drawings and Paintings by Anna Bayles Arthur
JULY 2 - 26 
SPLIT LEVEL GALLERY
opening reception July 11


drawings and paintings emerging from a practice of calling back







Come Back to the River originated as a mantra, a phrase repeated by the artist while running along the beautiful Mill river trails, an attempt to call herself back from the ceaseless and habitual rumination on mundane life things. This exhibition, a carefully curated selection of drawings and paintings, has emerged in part from this practice of “calling back.”  It is an invitation to the viewer to make their own momentary return to the metaphorical river, to step away from the daily bombardment of media and its constant demands upon their attention. These works are portals, windows into something ancient and familiar, an entry point into a more embodied experience–in all phases: the envisioning, the making, the exhibition: antithetical to the calculated algorithms that daily hijack the collective imagination. Amidst these visionary works, the viewer might find an offering: a sacred space, an opportunity to access the multiplicity of human experience–not only the beautiful and the sublime, but also some of the grief and longing, anger and foreboding that haunts us in these deeply troubled times.

ANNA BAYLES ARTHUR has been laying down images on paper since she was a small child–and for the last three decades, ceaselessly engaged in the discipline of making prints, drawings, and paintings. Having landed in western MA following the completion of an MFA at UMass, Amherst, she has continued to produce exhibitions of her work throughout New England. For Ms. Arthur, art making has always been more of a calling than a career, and it has been through some combination of privilege, hard work, and luck that she has been able to maintain this vocation. Despite (or perhaps because of) her aversion to social media platforms and practical avenues of self promotion, her creative practice has continued to evolve–the foundation of which has always been a rootedness to place and a deep connection to the natural world. She has been living and working in the same studio in Northampton, MA since 2006. www.annabaylesarthur.org/  






A.P.E.'s programming is made possible in part by sustained support from the Massachusetts Cultural Council and The Community Foundation of Western Massachusetts.