(KOOL)
James Castle
JAMES CASTLE, c1910-1977. ARTIST’S BOOK WITH SOOT AND SPIIT ON FOUND PAPER.
In rural Idaho, in the final year of the 19th Century, James Castle was born. Profoundly deaf, he attended school only briefly and never learnt to read, write, or sign properly, he lived a largely uncommunicative life and was only understood by his loving family. Yet, despite his inability to speak or engage with words, Castle had something to say. Developing a sort of charcoal from a mix of soot collected from the fireplace and his own spit, he created hundreds of thousands of artworks using his fingers, sharpened sticks, or peach pits as tools, drawing on found paper and creating books from discarded objects such as this cigarette packet. Unaware of the art world developing around him, his work runs concurrently with the modes and movements across the western world - his own creations often predating mainstream ideas by years. He drew scenes of his domestic existence, of the rural characters he encountered, and the landscape and architecture he loved with an almost photographic memory. He drew across styles, creating works at times naive and abstract and others figurative and exacting - unbeknownst to him, Castle’s mind contained within it an understanding of almost every significant art movement of the 20th century.