ism of the Week - week 1

Each week during our current exhibition, ...isms: Unlocking Art's Mysteries, we will post deeper insight into one of the paintings on view. Past the credit line, past the exhibition label, Assistant Curator Amanda Burdan shares her thoughts:

Stephen Howard’s painting Judge Marvin’s Barn draws attention to an ancient building in Lyme. The Marvin homestead was the subject of a feature article in the New London Day in 1937, shortly before Howard moved to Lyme, celebrating the many generations of Marvins who had lived there since it was built in 1788. Located on Nickerson Hill, the highest elevation in all of New London County, the farm was said to have been visited by President Andrew Jackson, who stopped to water his horses after crossing the Connecticut River on Ely’s ferry.

Although this painting appears in the exhibition in a section on Regionalism, the attention to a local historic property also shares some of the sensibilities of Historicism. By looking back from his twentieth century point of view, Howard suggests a nostalgia for a New England of the past, of which the Marvin farm was emblematic. Rather than rendering the barn as it might have looked in a bygone era, Howard’s realism offers a dilapidated structure and an ominous sky. The implied elegy for colonial days and agrarian ways was not uncommon for artists during the Great Depression.

Stephen Howard (1912–2010)

Judge Marvin’s Barn

Oil on canvas
Florence Griswold Museum

Gift of Mrs. Janet C. Davis in honor of the Centennial

Landscape painting, under the microscope

Tula Telfair, Pleasure Was Considered Decadent, 2010.  Oil on canvas, 70h x 80w inches. Courtesy of Forum Gallery.

Although Tula Telfair's landscape paintings occupy monumental canvases that seem to encourage distanced observation, she urges her viewers to step close to each work. Imagine looking at a painting under a microscope. On Telfair's canvas, you'll see the traces of three to seven different painting techniques, for the way that paint sits on the surface varies depending on the terrain that's represented. This style of seeing invites the viewer to imagine her style of working on the canvas by examining the brushstrokes themselves.

Telfair's actions are preserved forever on the surface of her paintings, and are a direct response to the imagined landscape. As physical terrains shift, so does her method of painting each subject, with a towering expanse of cloud depicted intentionally differently from, for example, an expanse of field. Her technique speaks to a rigorous art education and deeply thought-out creative process. As Telfair puts it, in her landscapes, paint is a subject in itself.

So be sure to lean in closely to examine Telfair's landscapes when you visit the exhibit. A scientist is rewarded with a new display when peering through the microscope, and you'll be rewarded with an entirely different view of Telfair's paintings by examining them thoroughly!

Exploring the modern landscape

Tula Telfair, Most Approaches suffer from the Predictable Isolation of Schools, 2010.  Oil on canvas, 72h x 108w inches. Courtesy of Forum Gallery.

Tula Telfair's powerful landscapes reflect memories of her own experiences in nature. At a young age, she witnessed the vast terrain, varied weather systems, and changing color palettes of landscapes around the world. But unlike the traditional works of the American Impressionists or Hudson River Valley School, the images on her canvases don't represent real locales.

Instead, Telfair's landscapes are imagined - vividly imagined. When I spoke to her last week about her work, she emphasized how important it is that her dramatic paintings provoke strong emotional responses or memories in viewers. As a thoroughly modern landscape painter, she creates image-based work that treats both the landscape, and its' viewer, as subject. 

As viewers, we're on the right path if we feel on edge or overwhelmed, or if a painting triggers powerful physical sensations from our own remembered experiences of the natural world.

Certain landscapes have the power to remind us how ephemeral our lives are, in the context of our existence in a mysterious universe. Many of us have experienced universal moments of awe and wonder as we have looked across a mountain range or craned our necks to see a night sky full of stars.  It's this sometimes unsettling, but essential aspect of the human experience, that Telfair's work evokes. Which landscapes have had that effect on you?

Behind the scenes with Tula Telfair

{In her Manhattan studio, Tula Telfair works on the landscape paintings that will be the centerpiece of the museum's upcoming exhibit.} 

There's an unmistakable relaxation response in our bodies that heralds the spring season, isn't there? Longer sunny days, warm breezes, and blooming flowers inevitably inspire easier smiles and sighs of contentment as everyone thaws out from the long, cold winter. 

It's exactly that kind of powerful, sensual physical response to nature that inspires Tula Telfair's dramatic landscape paintings, and she seeks to evoke a similar reaction in her viewers. Last week I had the pleasure of going behind the scenes with her to talk about her upcoming exhibit at the Florence Griswold Museum, Landscapes in Counterpoint.

As with any body of creative work, Telfair's landscapes have evolved over time. They began as quick color studies meant to inform the narrative, figurative pieces she was creating at the time. But one morning, an art dealer walked into her studio to find a grouping of these luminous, colorful landscapes scattered across the floor, "like little jewels", she remembers. 

From that dealer's initial interest in showing similar pieces, a body of large, dramatic landscapes has emerged. Now, she spends the days in her Manhattan studio absorbed in large canvases like the ones pictured above, working on as many as eleven at one time. In the weeks leading up to the opening of her exhibit on April 24th,  I'll be posting more from behind the scenes, sharing pieces about her creative process, and recommendations for the upcoming exhibit.