Tag Archive for Telfair

Wesleyan in the News

by Lauren Rubenstein • February 11, 2019

In this recurring feature in The Wesleyan Connection, we highlight some of the latest news stories about Wesleyan and our alumni.

Recent Wesleyan News

Wall Street International Magazine: “Tula Telfair: Reverie”

Professor of Art Tula Telfair’s new exhibition of landscape paintings, “Reverie,” is presented Feb. 7 through March 30 at the Forum Gallery in New York. According to the article, “In the fourteen paintings that comprise ‘Reverie,’ she explores the inner reaches of her dreams and memories, taking us to places she has been or believes in so fully that she is able to portray and take the viewer to the essential, emotional center of every location as she recalls not only the place, but the sense of discovery, of wonder she felt as she found it.”

2. Hartford Courant: “Don’t Throw Away Your Shot: Wesleyan University Expands Hamilton Prize for Creativity Scholarship”

The Courant reports on news that beginning this year, three incoming students will have an opportunity to be recognized for their outstanding creative work under Wesleyan’s prestigious Hamilton Prize for Creativity. In addition to the grand prize—a four-year, full-tuition scholarship to attend Wesleyan—the University will also award two honorable mentions, along with $5,000 grants to support creative work. The announcement was also covered in Playbill and The Middletown Press.

3. NBC Connecticut: “National Girls and Women in Sports Day Encourages Girls to Get Out and Play”

by Olivia Drake • September 26, 2016

Professor of Art Tula Telfair stands in her painting studio located in Lyme, Conn. Her work will be celebrated with a book release on Oct. 18, a public discussion on Oct. 19, and solo show in New York CIty, opening Nov. 10.

Although Professor of Art Tula Telfair’s hyper-realistic landscape paintings are vividly detailed, the scenes she depicts are not found in nature; they are conjured from memory and imagination. Informed by her experiences growing up on four continents, Telfair produces fantastical visions with delicate brushstrokes and a mastery of color and light. Suggestive of waterfalls in Africa, deserts of the American Southwest, and ice floes in Antarctica, Telfair’s art draws attention to the power and fragility of nature.

Telfair’s art, which has been featured in public collections around the world, will be showcased in a new book, Invented Landscapes, released on Oct. 18 by Abrams Books. The book can be pre-ordered online.

Included in the book are more than 120 images of her paintings, works in progress and personal photos. The images are accompanied by essays written by Michael Roth ’78, president of Wesleyan University; J. Michael Fay, biologist, ecologist, conservationist and National Geographic Explorer-in-Residence; and Henry Adams, the Menakka and Essel Bailey ’66 Distinguished Visiting Scholar in the College of the Environment and a professor of art history at Case Western Reserve University. Read more about the essay authors online.

“In the art of Tula Telfair we find … ourselves at once entranced by the beauty of the painted canvas and invited to examine the mystery of the world within it,” Roth says in his essay. “As we probe deeper, we find ourselves returning to the surface as if out of breath. The mysteriousness of the inner world, rendered with such precision, remains intact.”

Telfair was raised in Gabon, located on the west coast of Africa, surrounded by Fang, Pygmy and Bakuta tribes. Her father, Peter Telfair, worked as a geological mining engineer for Bethlehem Steel, the Gabonese government and a French mining company.

“We lived in the jungle and raised orphaned baby lowland gorillas,” she recalls. “Nature was the most powerful force there. I always felt small in the face of such a constant and unpredictable presence.”

Although Telfair’s work looks realistic, she works intuitively and only plans the size and format of each canvas.

by Olivia Drake • January 8, 2015

Tula Telfair, professor of art, is having a solo exhibition of 21 new monumental oil paintings at the Louisiana Art & Science Museum Jan. 10 through March 15. The opening reception is 6 to 8 p.m. Jan. 29.

Tula Telfair works on one of her oil paintings.

In a “World of Dreams— New Landscape Paintings,” Telfair paints monumental landscapes and epic-scale vistas that act as windows into another world — a dream world — where everything seems familiar yet remains beyond grasp. Drawing upon the long tradition of landscape painting from the backdrops of the Renaissance through the Romanticism of the 19th century, she presents a thoroughly contemporary perspective upon an archaic art form.

Instead of documenting actual sites, Telfair combines invented images with a variety of formal painterly techniques to achieve highly convincing yet fictitious illusions that invite contemplation upon the relationship between humankind and the environment.

This exhibition is made possible in part by a Local Project Assistance Grant from the Arts Council of Greater Baton Rouge, funded by the East Baton Rouge Parish Mayor-President and Metro Council.

The images, which were on display in the Ezra and Cecile Zilkha Gallery in 2014, are featured in this past News @ Wesleyan article.

Telfair’s Imaginary Landscapes Garner Attenton from Artists, Scientists Alike

by Olivia Drake • December 10, 2014

Tula Telfair works on her oil painting.

#THISISWHY
(by Christine Foster. Originally published in Wesleyan Magazine, Dec. 10, 2014)

Professor of Art Tula Telfair’s epic and massive landscape paintings fill the walls of Wesleyan’s Ezra and Cecile Zilkha Gallery. They call forth our memories of the most stunning scenic vistas—craggy mountains topped by threatening clouds; impossibly moist, green valleys; icebergs jutting hundreds of feet out of the freezing aqua waters below. From a distance, they appear to be photographs, but they aren’t. These views don’t even exist, except in Telfair’s mind and on her canvases.

Still—even knowing they are imagined— the viewer is tempted to look for signs of reality. The glint of shimmering gold on one mountainside catches your eye. You wonder: are those lights of a house perched on the side of that cliff? Or maybe it’s the sun glinting off granite slopes at sunset?

Then you approach the painting—wider than you are tall. As you draw near you see that the tiny gold threads have vanished. In their place are strips of dark paint, ridge-like, and they almost look sticky. The painterly detail becomes obvious and as stunning in its own way as the photo-like perfection was from afar.

So it is with Tula Telfair’s art and maybe even her life: it looks stunning from a distance, but different and still spectacularly beautiful the closer you get…

Read the full story in Wesleyan Magazine here.
Read more about Telfair’s exhibit at the Louisiana Art & Science Museum here.
Read more about Telfair’s exhibit at Wesleyan here.

Watch a new video featuring Telfair below:

Encoding Will Help Recognition 2014, oil on canvas, 72 x 100 inches

Civilization Could Not Do Without It 2014, Oil on Canvas, 75 x 100 inches

Telfair’s Paintings Celebrated at Zilkha Gallery

by Olivia Drake • September 17, 2014

On Sept. 16, Professor of Art Tula Telfair spoke about her new landscape paintings which are on display through Dec. 7 in the Ezra and Cecile Zilkha Gallery.

“A World of Dreams—New Landscape Paintings” by Professor of Art Tula Telfair will be on exhibit through Dec. 7 at the Ezra and Cecile Zilkha Gallery. “A World of Dreams” includes new large-scale paintings in which Telfair presents monumental landscapes and epic-scale vistas that are simultaneously awe-inspiring and intimate. This is her second exhibition in the Zilkha Gallery. Read more about the exhibit here.

The exhibit’s opening reception was held Sept. 16 at the gallery. (Photos by Dat Vu ’15)

by Olivia Drake • September 10, 2014

Tula Telfair, professor of art, will debut her newest collection of large-scale oil paintings at the Zilkha Gallery Sept. 16. Pictured is her painting titled “The Structured Depth of Meaning and Desire,” 2014, 72 x 100 inches.

“A World of Dreams—New Landscape Paintings” by Professor of Art Tula Telfair will be on exhibit Sept. 16 through Dec. 7 at the Ezra and Cecile Zilkha Gallery. The exhibit’s opening reception will be held 5 to 6:30 p.m. Sept. 16 at the gallery.

“Civilization Could Not Do Without It,” 2014, 75 x 100 inches.

“A World of Dreams” includes new large-scale paintings in which Telfair presents monumental landscapes and epic-scale vistas that are simultaneously awe-inspiring and intimate. She combines stillness with motion, solitude with universality, and definition with suggestion in her bold and quiet works. This is her second exhibition in the Zilkha Gallery.

All paintings are oil on canvas.

“The work for this show is entirely different. The subjects are different, the techniques are different in each painting, and from piece to piece,” she explained. “There is a lot of diversity of images in this exhibition that reflect a broad range of environments from the Antarctic to the jungles of Africa to rolling fields and soaring mountains. There are a full range of landscapes.”

Telfair’s contemporary paintings demonstrate the spirit and potency

by Olivia Drake • July 9, 2012

Tula Telfair's exhibit.

Rick Davidman ’84 is hosting the opening of an exhibition of Tula Telfair’s paintings on July 26. Telfair, professor of art, is known for her large oil paintings that combine images of epic landscape and dramatic weather with minimal elements of pure color.

The opening will take place from 6 to 8 p.m. in the lobby of the Condé Nast Building at 4 Times Square, New York City.

Admission is free and wine and hors d’ouerves will be served. For info and to RSVP, contact Rick Davidman ’84 at rick@dfngallery.com.

Telfair’s web site can be viewed here.

Adelstein, Greene, Telfair Honored with Binswanger Prize for Excellence in Teaching

by Olivia Drake • May 27, 2012

Wesleyan President Michael Roth, second from left, congratulates Binswanger Prize recipients, from left, Richard Adelstein, Nathanael Greene and Tula Telfair. (Photo by John Van Vlack)

Three Wesleyan faculty received The Binswanger Prize for Excellence in Teaching during the 2012 Commencement on May 27. The Binswanger Prize was inaugurated in 1993 as an institutional recognition of outstanding faculty members. The award is made possible by gifts from the family of the late Frank G. Binswanger Sr., HON ’85

The standards and criteria for the annual prizes shall be excellence in teaching, as exemplified by commitment to the classroom and student accomplishment, intellectual demands placed on students, lucidity, and passion. Recommendations may be based on any of the types of teaching that are done at the university including, but not limited to, teaching in lecture courses, seminars, laboratories, creative and performance-based courses, research tutorials and other individual and group tutorials at the undergraduate and graduate level.

This year’s recipients are as follows:

Richard Adelstein, the Woodhouse/Sysco Professor of Economics
Richard Adelstein has an S.B. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and received an M.A.T. from Harvard University, and a J.D. and Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania and its Law School. He has taught economics and social studies at Wesleyan since 1975. He has spent sabbatical years as a visiting scholar at Oxford University, Harvard University, and the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey, and as a Fulbright Visiting Professor at the University of Munich.

by Benjamin Travers • March 26, 2012

TulaTelfair, professor of art, describes her passion for art and the capacity of Imaginary Landscapes to stir her viewers’ memories.

Telfair’s “Imaginary Landscapes” Debuts in New York Gallery

by Lauren Rubenstein • February 13, 2012

Tula Telfair's oil on canvas, "Built Exclusively for Delight," (2011) was one of 15 paintings featured in Telfair's Out of Sight: Imaginary Landscapes exhibit.

Professor of Art Tula Telfair’s latest exhibition, Out of Sight: Imaginary Landscapes, opened at the Forum Gallery in New York, N.Y. on Jan. 5 to a packed crowd. The 15 large panoptic paintings shown in the exhibition, which ran through Feb. 11, depict majestic mountainous landscapes dominated by dramatic skies that reflect a broad range of locations and weather patterns.

As with Telfair’s past work, her landscapes are derived from memory and imagination. Telfair, director of Wesleyan’s Arts Studio Program, finds it fascinating when people tell her they can identify a particular location, since none actually exist.

“Since I have no idea when I begin what the final image will be, it feels like I’m exploring new territory when I start a painting, and that’s very exciting. Because I can easily copy images, I tended to lose interest in the process when I worked from observation,” she explains. But by painting from her imagination and memory, she is challenged intellectually, technically and emotionally. “Successfully painting an image that was not observed, but that viewers are convinced exists, is gratifying.”

Telfair works on many canvases simultaneously. She begins by mixing colors for the skies and starts painting each one intuitively.

by Olivia Drake • January 19, 2010

Painting by Tula Telfair, professor of art.

Oil paintings by Tula Telfair, professor of art, will be on display at the Florence Griswold Museum April 24 through June 27. Telfair’s exhibit is titled “Landscapes in Counterpoint.” The Griswold Museum is located at 96 Lyme Street in Old Lyme, Conn.

The exhibition pairs nine new monumental paintings by the artist with her selection of 19th and early 20th-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.

“We’re thrilled that the artist is creating new work for this exhibition that is contemporary and yet also in dialogue with the long history of landscape painting,” says Amy Kurtz Lansing, curator of the Florence Griswold Museum.

Telfair’s poetic landscapes, some over 9 by 6 feet,