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Fine Art PR Publicity Announcements News and Information

Florence Griswold Museum Presents Tula Telfair Exhibition

Tula Telfair: Landscapes in Counterpoint pairs nine new monumental paintings by the artist with her selection of nineteenth and early twentieth-century paintings from the museum’s collection. Telfair’s choices, which include works by Thomas Cole and Frederic E. Church, establish the visual foundation for, as well as a counterpoint to, her own large-scale landscapes—paintings that are informed by both tradition and imagination. Open April 24 through June 27, 2010.

Telfair approaches landscape through color, creating epic canvases that balance illusionism against abstraction. Her poetic works, some over 9 by 6 feet, seem strangely familiar, their grandeur recalling the picturesque panoramas captured in the nineteenth century by artists of the Hudson River School. Yet unlike painters who record what they see in front of them, Telfair composes her romantic scenes from memory, drawing upon her travels around the world and the vistas of her youth in West Africa. Telfair often positions the viewer above or at a distance from the landscapes, leaving tantalizingly indistinct details like roads or houses that might acknowledge a human presence in the scenes. An appreciation for the history of art also permeates Telfair’s work. Her embrace of ideal landscapes recalls the painters of the Renaissance, as does her use of glazes to impart translucence to her paintings.

About the Artist
Telfair is a Professor of Art, and the Interim Co-Chair of the Department of Art and Art History at Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut. Tula Telfair lives and works in New York City. Born in Bronxville, NY, in 1961, she grew up in Africa, Asia and Europe before settling in the United States as a young girl. She received a BFA from Moore College of Art in 1980, and earned an MFA in 1986 as a Graduate Fellow from Syracuse University. She has work in collections around the world, and has shown extensively in one-person and group exhibitions in the United States and broad. Her work is in the public collections of the New Orleans Museum of Art, the Redding Art Museum, General Electric Corporation, The Federal Reserve Bank, MasterCard Corporation, Deloitte Touch, Cable Vision, Brauerei Beck and Company to name a few. She is represented by Forum Gallery in New York City.

The Florence Griswold Museum 96 Lyme Street, Old Lyme, CT 06371 860-434-5542

www.FlorenceGriswoldMuseum.org

Image: Tula Telfair, Order is a Necessary Counterpart to Sensuality, 2010. Oil on canvas, 74 x 96 inches