Jim Costello’s Nature Watches People all the Time has hung in my living room for more than 25 years. An unnamed landscape and a smaller graceful and exquisite nude have accompanied Nature on the adjoining wall, separated by double French doors. The entire 28 foot width of my house has been adorned by Costello’s work. To walk into that room, when it is bathed in the light of a full moon will take your breath away, so luminous and beautiful is Nature as she floats above a landscape that captures the beauty of the Shenandoah Valley. Living with these paintings has enriched my life in unexpected ways and my love of the valley and the life I’ve made here is intertwined with Jim’s paintings. Numerous friends of mine have Jim’s paintings hanging in their homes and I never fail to look at them with a careful eye.
Jim has a large body of work that spans the more than four decades he has resided in the valley. His house and sheds overflow with paintings, drawings and illustrated journals. For quite some time, I’ve wondered what would become of his life’s work.
When the news reached me that I was going to be a grandmother, one of the first things that popped into my mind was that I had a legacy to leave my grandchildren—the art, including Jim’s, that I have collected over the years. That was when I started to seriously consider Jim’s legacy. I knew I would do a show of his life’s work…where did that crazy idea come from? It seemed an impossibility, but the idea nagged at me and kept percolating in my mind. Seemingly, out of nowhere, the opportunity presented itself and the kind people at the Clarke County Historical Society agreed to let me give Jim a retrospective at the Burwell-Morgan Mill.
Creating the work was natural and necessary to Jim’s existence. Although his paintings were exhibited in 1984 at a gallery in Washington D.C. to rave reviews and commercial success, Jim retreated back to the seclusion of his mountain home. He kept painting, building pole barns and cavorting with his friends, content to let sleeping dogs lie. Now, after 30 years, Jim’s paintings and drawings will finally make their rightful debut, right smack dab in the middle of some the prettiest Shenandoah Valley countryside you’ll ever see, in an old rustic mill…just the kind of place that belongs on a Jim Costello canvas.
Peggy Simon
Cataloging the paintings
In the fall of 2014, we began the process of removing Jim’s paintings from a barn and smaller outbuilding on the Costello property, where they have been stored for many years. The oak-framed, 4ʹ x 5ʹ paintings were nested together on a large platform in the barn, and in a neat row in the outbuilding. Discovering over 150 large paintings, and about a dozen smaller paintings of various sizes, we were dismayed by the scale of the project we had undertaken.
As each painting was carried out into the sunlight, cleaned, photographed, numbered and cataloged, the sheer beauty and magnitude was thrilling. We understood then, more than ever, that these paintings could neither remain unseen nor unrecognized.
We are profoundly grateful to Jim and his wife Barbara for their cooperation in this venture, and for the privilege and joy of being given access to this astonishing body of work.
Maggie Maloney
A day with Jim’s drawings
We spent a delightful March afternoon in Jim’s studio choosing drawings from his many sketchbooks for inclusion in the June, 2015 retrospective at Burwell-Morgan Mill in Millwood, Virginia.
The notebooks display the range and depth of Jim’s creative process. Using a ball point pen, his quick, sure strokes capture the gesture and line of his subjects. Figures and landscapes predominate, often accompanied by captions or observations. A sense of play and fun is evident throughout, as is his love of the female form, the Virginia countryside, and the houses and farms that decorate its hills and valleys.
When asked which he would choose for the show, Jim replied, “I don’t know, they’re all wonderful.”
Mary Redmon