Tula Telfair: From a Distance

New York, NY – From January 19 to March 11, 2023, Forum Gallery presents Tula Telfair: From a Distance, the eighth solo exhibition for the Artist at the gallery.  For this exhibition, Telfair has created twenty-four oil on panel paintings in an intimate scale, a departure for the Artist best known for her grand-scale, heroic landscapes.  In From a Distance, each 24 x 18 inch painting evokes the birds-eye view captured from an airplane window or a mountain peak.  We see scenes of mysterious mountaintops and waterfalls veiled in mist, fiery volcanic eruptions, and haloed plains and valleys revealing the subtle curvature of the earth.  Hauntingly familiar, these are invented vistas conjured by the Artist’s mind, portals inviting us to explore immersive and lush, natural worlds.

About this newest body of work, Telfair writes:

“These small jewel-like paintings embrace the slippery nature of attempting to recall landscapes only seen from a distance – seductive and elusive visions provided by fleeting glimpses viewed from afar. The geographic regions depicted in these invented landscapes exist in areas where change is rapidly occurring. My recent work is informed by on-site-visits to active volcanoes, locations where tectonic plates meet and earthquakes occur daily, the solitary Arctic­ and Antarctic regions, isolated areas in Africa, and locations where shifting rivers and coastlines impact the edges of the lands they border. This body of work documents the unplanned visions witnessed along the way, from a distance.”

Tula Telfair lives and works in Connecticut and has been represented by Forum Gallery since 2004.  The recipient of many awards, including the Walter Gropius Master Artist award (2015), she is Chair of the Department of Art and Art History at Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut where she has taught since 1989 and served as Academic Dean of the Arts and Humanities, in addition to receiving the Binswanger Prize for Excellence in Teaching. Born in Bronxville, NY in 1961, Tula Telfair grew up in Africa, East Asia, and Europe before settling in the United States. Paintings by Tula Telfair are held and exhibited by many public and private collections, including the Arkansas Museum of Fine Arts, Asheville Art Museum, New Orleans Museum of Art, and The Hudson River Museum.