ABOVE: On the slopes of Haleakala, artist Curtis Wilson Cost refines his latest painting, “Lavender Gateway,” a view of the West Maui Mountains framed by Maui’s beloved jacaranda trees.
Its twisting roads follow patterns established during the 1800s if not before. Its settlers chose rocky slopes over plantation-camp lowlands, the hand-built over the well-managed. The sea is near, but thousands of feet below.
This year marks half a century that artist Curtis Wilson Cost has been preserving Upcountry scenes on canvas. He hunts for them—spectacularly bloom-laden jacaranda trees, antique shacks with rusted roofs (a favorite subject), a single cow in a pasture rich with slanting golden light, a rock wall, a dirt road, long views from high places. He archives them in acts of heightened realism using techniques so exact that one can almost see every green blade in a grassy pasture. A corrugated roof glows like moonlight.
He learned these techniques as a kid from his father, James Peter Cost, who maintained a successful solo gallery in Carmel, California, for twenty-five years. Curtis moved to Oahu as a teen, ostensibly to finish high school but primarily to surf and play music. He married Jill, his steadfast partner/adviser, and together they happened upon Upcountry—remote Keokea, specifically, where they built a multi-tiered, seaward facing homestead that includes the Curtis Cost Gallery, available by appointment only.
When Cost began painting fifty years ago, Front Street Lahaina and the new West Maui resort scene was a hot art market with emphasis on impressionistic and visionary pieces. He used that scene to launch his career, but he knew he didn't fit with the '70s vibe. His intensely realistic landscapes hark back to Hawaii art from an earlier generation. Cost views Howard Hitchcock and Lloyd Sexton, both born in Hilo, as his forebears. Both were representational artists devoted to creating island landscapes as vividly as fact. "I'm in that tradition," he says.
Evidently, the Hawaii Department of Transportation regards Cost as a classic Hawaii artist who merits a prominent place on public walls. HDOT is in the process of installing his artwork in airports across the state. Visitors landing at Kahului Airport can view 150 of his pieces, including an eleven-foot-long mural along the Welcome Wall. His works are on display similarly throughout Hilo Airport and will soon be on display at Kona Airport.
Just as Cost's style comes from an earlier time so, too, does his subject matter; he captures a world in the process of vanishing. Shacks with rusty roofs don't last. "I'm chasing these things before they disappear. A glimpse before they vanish. Upcountry is filled with early-plantation life, and it's getting ripped down. I'm capturing it slower than it's going away," says Cost. "It's feeling a little bit like a race."
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