James Castle’s compositions, with their atmospheric imprint and subtle nuances of texture, seem to translate his particular experiences and capture of life in rural Idaho. Born deaf, also illiterate, he forged a unique visual vocabulary away from the influences of the art mainstream and conceived his own artistic tools and techniques. Instead of conventional art materials, he used the soot—dampened with his saliva—from the family stove on discarded envelopes and paper goods picked from the post office and general store that his parents managed from their residence. Over five decades, he created a prolific corpus of figurative works—portraits, farmlands, interior scenes—imagined and real. The divisive and elongated dark form placed in front of this work recalls a Brechtian method recurrently used by Castle, which reaffirms his presence as a conscious critical observer.

Valérie Rousseau, exhibition label for Six Decades Collecting Self-Taught Art: Revealing a Diverse and Rich Artistic Narrative. New York: American Folk Art Museum, 2019.