“I am fascinated by the subjectivity of perception and the power of memory to anchor our place in the world.”
—Tula Telfair
Opening June 26, 2025, TULA TELFAIR: N A T U R E Does Not Locate Itself examines Tula Telfair’s work at the intersection of Realism and imagination, as well as art and the natural world. This large-scale exhibition is the first solo museum show of her work in the NYC-metro area in the past 15 years. On view through October 5 are 33 pieces, including 21 monumental canvases, painted between 2014 and today. An insightful, fully-illustrated catalog, with essays highlighting her aesthetics, techniques, creative rhythms, and her position within the tradition of American painting, accompanies this exhibition. An added feature of this installation juxtaposes selections made by the artist from the museum’s collection of minerals and global material culture.
“Telfair’s breathtaking, invented vistas are remarkable and beautiful,” said President and CEO Thomas J. Loughman. “We are proud to present to new audiences her irrepressible spirit as a creative force confronting nature’s awesome scale.”
Telfair’s hyper-realistic and immersive paintings appear both familiar and fantastical. They are drawn not from direct observation while she paints but from memory, imagination, and emotion. Inspired by the grandeur that evokes awe and wonder, she creates images that convey the unnerving power of nature. This continues the Museum’s exploration of the natural world through the lens of visual arts.
As she paints, Telfair captures her feelings while moving through a location, recalling how the terrain shifts alongside the smells and sounds she experiences. These vivid yet visceral memories inform the technical decisions she makes. Beginning with a blank canvas, she works intuitively, and the image transforms countless times until it triggers a Déjà vu experience. She employs a range of painting techniques and these works may appear to be photographs from a distance; however, as one approaches, the landscape image dissolves into an abstract, physically varied, and entirely material surface that also serves as a site for investigation, acting as an archive of her artistic actions.
The 33 paintings showcase the diversity of biomes, ranging from tundra to desert to rainforest. An eight-foot-long painting, Civilization Could Not Do Without It, depicts an Antarctic scene with large mountains in the background and a sea of smaller ice chunks floating in the foreground. A more contemplative work, The Contemporary Sublime, features a river cutting through the middle of the painting, appearing to be a small stream or a river seen from afar. New work like The Temptations, a tropical scene, boasts brilliant hues of pink that seem to dye the water. At five by six feet, the new Fluid Desire depicts a blood-red river cutting through a foggy mountain pass, flooding the grass with red pigment as if the earth itself were bleeding.
About the Artist
Tula Telfair is a Professor of Art in the Department of Art and Art History at Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut. She lives and works in New York City and Lyme, Connecticut. Born in Bronxville, NY, in 1961, she grew up in Africa, Asia, and Europe before settling in the United States. She received her BFA as a W.W. Smith Foundation Fellow from Moore College of Art in 1984 and earned an MFA in 1986 as a Graduate Fellow from Syracuse University. Her work is part of public collections worldwide and has been extensively showcased in solo and group exhibitions both in the United States and abroad. She is represented by Forum Gallery in New York City.
About the Morris Museum
The Morris Museum—founded in 1913 and located on 8.5 acres in Morris Township, New Jersey, since the mid-1960s—draws visitors across the region to its dynamic and acclaimed art exhibitions program and performing arts events. Its 45,000+ object collection of art and material culture from around the world joins the art of our time in displays throughout the Museum’s purpose-built spaces and within the historic Twin Oaks mansion, designed by McKim, Mead & White.
