Violet Costello
Canada – Painting
Touch Him (‘Bringing Home Baby’ series), 2108
Acrylic on canvas
121.92 X 152.4 cm
£9000
Violet Costello’s painting series, Bringing Home Baby, depicts newborns being confronted by the intensely detailed and idiosyncratic cultures of family homes. The absurd, dreamlike quality of these homes evokes the strangeness of these new worlds for the babies, and is suggestive of the complex processes by which culture defines and imposes the identity that will shape a baby’s life. The series explores the idea of family in narratives that are deliberately open-ended.
Mad Princess (‘Getting Big’ series), 2017
Acrylic and collage on canvas
121.92 X 91.44 cm
£7000
Lovely Boy (‘Getting Big’ series), 2017
Acrylic and collage on canvas
121.92 X 91.44 cm
£7000
Big Boy (‘Getting Big’ series), 2017
Acrylic and collage on canvas
121.92 X 91.44 cm
£7000
The Getting Big paintings series consist of 16 paintings, each one a response to one of the toddlers in the Getting Big sculptures and photos.
Getting Big exhibition; Mad Princess, Lovely Boy and Big Boy
The work of Violet Costello, winner of the 2020 ‘Procreate Project – Mother Art Prize Online Award,’ is inspired by the complexities of the human condition: our quirks and familiarities, our moments of loneliness and moments of joy, the ways in which we identify and represent ourselves in and to the world. With a practice incorporating painting, sculpture and installation, Costello explores the home, familial relations and society’s ability to shape identity.
Artist’s Bio:
Violet Costello, completed her MFA Sculpture at Concordia University, Montreal, Quebec in 1991. Her works in painting, sculpture and installation are often comical, but also raise questions about the formation and meaning of cultural identities and stereotypes. She is interested in the complexities of the human condition and inspired by the child’s world of play, where reality readily gives way to the imagination. Costello’s sculptural installations have been exhibited throughout Canada, including Newborns/Swaddled, sculpture, Harcourt House, Edmonton, Alberta (2019); Getting Big, sculpture and painting, Latitude 53 Gallery, Edmonton, Alberta (2017); and Jumping Trout, City of Calgary – Glenmore Trail Retaining Walls Public Art Project, Calgary, Alberta (2007). She was a finalist for the Salt Spring National Art Prize 2019, receiving Honourable Mention for her painting Germaine (2018), a work from the Bringing Home Baby series. She has received awards from the Alberta Foundation for the Arts, British Columbia Culture, and Canada Council.
