Art history reflections: Curtis Cost

First Light in the Morning Air

My first take is that my work roughly falls into the classic realm. My paintings are predominantly linear, though I avoid universal lighting. I tend to paint in either the late or early colors of the day. I mostly use recessional compositions, but occasionally plane. My process is similar to the surrealist where one thing leads to another, but it does not convey a surreality.


Iao Valley

I strip away unnecessary elements and to that extent, my work is idealized. Essentially, my work is nature dominated and largely about preserving the essence of a place and time.


Upcountry Maui

While I love the through-the-canvas illusion, I always want to leave some of the painting subtly looking like paint. It allows the viewer to go back and forth between here and there, paint and pastureland, context and content, chaos and order, two dimensional and three dimensional. I like to play with the evocative aspects of representational landscape as it connects to my experience, which is somewhat of a storybook world, and still retain some semblance of art for art's sake.


Sunlit

CWC