Family of Artists

A Family of Artists

The Curtis Wilson Cost Gallery is a family legacy built on a deep love for art, nature, and personal expression. Curtis Wilson Cost’s journey as an artist is one rooted in family, passion, and the desire to preserve the unmatched beauty of Maui.

Curtis Wilson Cost

Curtis Wilson Cost’s original paintings and reproductions of Hawai‘i are some of the most sought-after in the world. He began his art career in the 1970s, and opened the Curtis Wilson Cost Gallery at the Kula Lodge with his wife Jill Cost in 1985. Mr. Cost continues to paint multiple new works a year and has the longest running one-man gallery in the state of Hawai‘i.

“My work is about place and timelessness. I have lived in Hawai‘i most of my life, and over the decades, my paintings have become an archive of the islands as they have grown, preserving them through renderings of the way they once were, and the way they remain underneath the surface of change.” — CWC

More about Curtis →

Jill Ann Radner CostCurtis’ wife

Jill Ann Radner Cost is the powerhouse behind the Curtis Wilson Cost Gallery. She has been managing the business behind the scenes since the inception of Mr. Cost’s painting career. She is a talented sewist and had her own one-woman business called Kulia Batiks before she and Mr. Cost built their fine art gallery together in the early 1980s. Now she also sews wares with her daughter Julia’s original fabrics, which are available in the gallery.

James Peter CostCurtis’ father

James Peter Cost was a California representational painter and a teacher of fine art. He co-owned the James Peter Cost Gallery in Carmel with his wife BettyJo Cost. He was the recipient of the Gold Medal from Franklin Mint in 1975 for the most outstanding American Seascape Artist. Two of his paintings made it to the front cover of Reader’s Digest in the 60s and 70s, and many of his images were printed on the covers of California magazines. His artwork is now on display in the Monterey County Museum of Art, and the Museum collection at Midwestern State University in Texas. In addition, Cost’s work can be found at President Ronald Reagan’s Young America’s Foundation.

Rogene RadnerJill’s mother

Rogene Radner was a professional painter, illustrator, fashion designer, and textile designer. She was an art professor at UH Mānoa, a graphic designer and an illustrator for a book that’s in the Smithsonian. In the 1960s, she designed fabrics for Malia, Hawaii, Inc on O‘ahu. In the 1970s, she had her own fashion line on Maui called “Rogene of Hawaii.” Her textiles were featured in National Geographic’s “Hawaii” published in 1970. The caption in National Geographic reads: “At Malia Hawaii, Inc, Rogene Radner paints bright patterns for holiday wear.”

Julia Allisson CostCurtis’ daughter

Julia Allisson Cost has been painting professionally since 2005. In addition to selling her paintings and giclées, she also designs textiles and has a fabric shop within the Cost Gallery. Her paintings and fabrics are collected around the world. In 2023, she published The Girl and the Boat, a wordless picture book and tale of friendship told through 30 of her oil paintings. The book is now carried in shops around the country.

More about Julia →

Website

juliacost.com

Instagram

@juliaallissoncost

Elliott Wilson CostCurtis’ son

Elliott Wilson Cost is an artist, designer, and programmer living in Rotterdam. Previously, he was a digital designer at Bloomberg News, helped design and develop Kickstarter’s The Creative Independent, and taught interaction design at The New School Parsons in New York City. Growing up in a deeply creative family has shaped how he looks at the world.

More about Elliott →

Website

elliott.computer

Instagram

@elliott.computer

Sunset over the West Maui Mountains from the gallery grounds

Tracing the Roots of Curtis Wilson Cost’s Masterpieces

1: Longest-running one-man gallery in the state of Hawai‘i
53: Years painting Maui
550+: Works of art

1953

An Artistic Upbringing

Curtis Wilson Cost was born in California in 1953. In 1968, he moved to O‘ahu with his mother, a public school teacher. He spent summers with his father, prolific representational artist James Peter Cost, in Carmel-by-the-Sea, California, where his father owned a successful one-man art gallery showcasing his paintings of coastal and rural California. Influenced by his artistic upbringing, Curtis developed a profound appreciation for drawing and painting.
1968

Inspiration Hits

Curtis grew up surfing on O‘ahu, developing an admiration for the natural beauty of the islands. He had a profound love for art but had yet to establish an artistic identity. One fateful day after school, Curtis walked into a high school friend’s home filled with early works of Hawai‘i representational artists, such as Howard Hitchcock and Lloyd Sexton. The once-flourishing representational art had diminished over the century as these artists passed from the scene. Curtis knew instantly that he’d found his artistic identity, and that he would paint rural Hawai‘i.
1971

A Turning Point

At 18 years old, Curtis was equally at home making art or making music. He’d written many songs with the talented musician Mackey Feary, including one that made it onto the soon-to-be-popular band Kalapana’s first album. Although he loved music, he became increasingly enamored with the pursuit of an art career. It was that same momentous year that Curtis met Jill Radner. She had been working at Gima’s Art Gallery in Honolulu, where she learned to mat and frame artwork. Little did they know they were building the foundations for their future career.
1972

The Cost Protégé

Curtis and Jill together decided to visit Curtis’s dad, James Peter Cost, in Carmel-by-the-Sea for an 8-month informal apprenticeship to learn the ins and outs of professional painting and gallery business ownership.

James Peter and his wife BettyJo, who ran The James Peter Cost Gallery, passed down a lifetime of knowledge to Curtis and Jill.
1973

Falling in Love with Maui

After his father’s master course in painting, Curtis and Jill returned to Hawai‘i, settling on Maui as a quieter alternative to O‘ahu. The two first camped out in a Volkswagen Bus in Upcountry Maui, eventually moving to the cottage that inspired Curtis’ piece “My Studio”.

Carefree and happily pursuing an artistic lifestyle, Curtis was transfixed by the beauty of Maui, producing painting after painting of its scenery.
1973–1985

Acclaim

Over the next fourteen years, Curtis began selling his paintings in local galleries and developed the reputation as a remarkable landscape artist that endures today. He became a sought after artist at Village Gallery in Lāhainā. His art was the first to be featured at Kaluanui, Hui No‘eau Visual Arts Center.

Curtis became known as rural Maui’s representational landscape painter.
1985–2020

The One-Man Gallery Begins

After working with galleries in Lāhainā for years, Curtis saw potential for his own gallery in the owners’ quarters of the Kula Lodge. This space was dank and covered in sawdust from woodworking, but Curtis envisioned a one-man gallery located nearer to his paintings’ rural subject matter on the slopes of Haleakalā. Around the same time, Curtis and Jill began building their current home nearby. Over the next 35 years, Curtis operated his own one-man gallery out of Kula Lodge, with an additional gallery on Front Street in Lāhainā from 2000–2008.
2019

Memorializing Maui

As Curtis’ style evolved, he became somewhat of a Maui record keeper. His paintings are an archive of rural Maui. The Hawai‘i Department of Transportation adorned the renovated Kahului Airport with over 150 of Curtis’ paintings.

Curtis Wilson Cost artwork now also hangs in Hilo and Kona airports, as well as in private homes throughout the world.
Photo by Ilir Bajraktari

2021

The Pièce de Résistance

Prior to 2020, Curtis and Jill fortuitously built a studio gallery located on their property in Kula. The stunning space became the new home for Curtis’ art when the Kula Lodge gallery was forced to close after 35 years due to the pandemic. Described by Curtis as his “finest piece of art”, the picturesque new studio gallery is surrounded by wisteria-covered footbridges, water features, fruit trees, flowering shrubs, and sweeping views of the West Maui mountains.

By appointment only, Curtis Wilson Cost invites travelers and art lovers to experience the rural aesthetic that inspires his career.
Present

Preserving Memories

Today, the Curtis Wilson Cost Gallery is the longest-running one-man gallery in the state of Hawai‘i. His hundreds of paintings serve as an archive of an ever-changing Hawai‘i landscape – a testament to a simpler time. His art is celebrated not only in Hawai‘i but also in private collections worldwide. Start your own Curtis Wilson Cost tradition: become a collector today.