Tula Telfair - Art & Art History Department

Professor of Art

Professional Site	http://www.tulatelfair.com
email:	ttelfair@wesleyan.edu
personal home page:	http://www.forumgallery.com/adetail.php?id=164, http://www.tulatelfair.com
mailing address:	Art and Art History Department
courses taught:	ARST131 - 02 ARST439 - 01
areas of expertise:	Painting and Drawing: Professor Telfair spent her early childhood in Gabon, Africa, moving to the United States when civil war broke out. She has exhibited her work extensively in galleries and museums in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Houston and Philadelphia, and additionally in Germany and France. Her paintings are in over thirty public collections including: Barclay Bank, Brauerei Beck & Company, Cable Vision, City of Philadelphia District Attorney's Office, Deloitte Touch, General Electric Corporation, Invenergy, Mastercard Corporation, Medicis Pharmaceutical Corporation, Metropolitan Life, Redding Art Museum, Russ Corporation, Steelcase Corporation, Syracuse University, The Chubb Group, The Federal Reserve Bank, The New Orleans Museum of Art, The Tower Group, The VanGuard Collection, Vlasic Corporation and Zilkha & Company. She received her BFA from Moore College of Art in 1984, and attended Syracuse University as a Graduate Fellow, receiving her MFA in 1986. Ms. Telfair is represented by Forum Gallery. All the images I paint are invented, and come purely from memory, not from observing a site, or utilizing photographic aids. Even though many of the required elements of the sublime are present, placing the work within the Romantic landscape tradition, I also employ devices that remind the viewer that these are simply paintings; two-dimensional surfaces covered with paint. Each image is bordered on three sides with a different colored edge. These lines appear to shift their color as they come directly in contact with the landscape, and can also make one side of the canvas appear to be closer to the viewer than the other. Although the images may appear familiar, using titles like, Debating the Precise Nature of Space or The Power of Interacting Volumes, distances them from association with any particular place, affording the viewer the opportunity to recall a personal experience. While maintaining an awareness of the material object, the depicted epic moments in nature, generally facilitate an emotional response. I am interested in the subjectivity of perception and the power of memory, using illusion to trigger recollections of things past.
research interests:	The action in Tula Telfairs landscape paintings takes place above the level of our understanding, in a place where events are determined, not experienced: her vistas are imagined, not observed. Telfair paints at the intersection of memory and anticipation, transporting us back and forth between what we have experienced and what we want to investigate. To do so, is to expand the limits of naturalist majesty, to move through an endless combination of indefinite time and unknown place with an effortless fluidity made possible by consummate craft. Telfair builds and frames her fictional visions with brilliant color that illuminates her enormous, active and unforgettable skies. Horizons are transitory spaces, alive with the intensity of reflected luminance; clouds are spectacular dramas, unfolding and revealing their tumescent stories. In Pleasure does Not Readily Surrender to Analysis and Exploring the Material Limits, Telfair shows stacked multiple images, exploring the associative power of nature. No two locales seem the same, but the pull of the near-narrative is constant and magnified by the mutuality of time and mood in the choices the artist makes. The golden glow of the hidden sun and the razor edge of the horizon unite the disparate elements with sure-handed confidence and control. There is a nearly geometric progression to these works, their power multiplying continuously as we move from one image to another. Adding to the depth of the spaces and the mystery of the narratives in these works is the realization that the meadows, forests, streams and skies are not contained by the frame, rather they extend before, behind and beyond the edges of the picture plane. In Imagination in the Service of Truth and Is Memory the Product of Historical Time?, the endless horizons are illuminated by a laser beam of white-hot light that compels attention and concentration. The horizon is a chapter in the story each painting reveals, not an event itself. This brilliant light, compressed under heavy skies, is the result of forces unknown, hinting at powerful events that have occurred or will occur in the future Many of the works contain bodies of water. Endless winding streams or completely contained pools reflect the sunlight and the clouds, while conveying the mood of the tales the paintings tell. Water guides us through the paintings, always pointing us toward the subject. Whether flowing or still, the water in these paintings is an anchoring presence that reassures us of the possibilities inherent in the landscapes. Similarly, the mountains do not overwhelm, holding their place against the sky, while never dominating. The paintings are not simply focused on the struggle between the elements of nature, as they are illustrative of the tense harmony within it. The fate of these stories hangs on this fragile balance, resulting in images that excite, calm and fascinate - often all at once. Telfairs paintings achieve their success with incredible economy of emotions and bravura. There is the suggestion of what has happened or will happen, but rarely does she depict a major event outside of nature itself. These are judicious works, subtly modulating their way through the narratives they have to reveal. They do this with radiant light, color and palpable stillness. They communicate by combining stillness with motion, solitude with universality and definition with suggestion. Far from the backdrops of Renaissance landscapes, or the observed travelogues of the nineteenth century, these are fully contemporary paintings in their inspiration and their execution, simultaneously lush and minimal.
academic association:	College Art Association
awards won:	See: http://www.tulatelfair.com/resume.htm
office hours:	Fall 09 Thursday 9:00-10:00 a.m. 103 Art Studio South
publications:	http://www.tulatelfair.com/resume.html
special role in dept:	Program Director
lab url:	http://www.tulatelfair.com">
grants:	See: http://www.tulatelfair.com/resume.htm