Artist Reception
November 3, 2023 | 5–8 p.m.

How to See: A Dialogue Between Landscape and Imagination
by Molly Noem Fulton and Tom Dempster

This series of work was born out of the spirit of collaboration between two artists that understand the prairie. Tom Dempster and Molly Fulton are South Dakota based artists working in their respective mediums of photography and acrylic paint. Together these collaborative “photo paintings” speak to an expression of what lies beneath the visual senses of the landscape. As Tom said to Molly, “My photographs are going to show you what things look like. I want you to paint on the photographs and show me what’s really there.”

This series embodies the stillness of the grasslands and hillsides of South Dakota. As Molly says, “This stillness is often referred to in my family as ‘the silent minute.’ Through various connections to land and the encouragement to be outside, we became aware of the silence the landscape provides. We have come to value stillness and allowing ourselves to listen to the land.”

This “stillness” is clearly at play in the connection of photograph to paint. What Molly adds through paint connects the image to the past, to motion, to pattern in the natural world and to the briefest moments shared with those who’ve gone before us.

The landscape of South Dakota has a special dialogue with us if we let it. In this silence there is a connection to our deepest imagination and a way of seeing beyond the visible. These photo paintings by Molly Fulton and Tom Dempster bring that imagination to the surface.