Born deaf, James Castle never learned to read, write, speak, or lip-read. He attended the Idaho State School for the Deaf and Blind in Gooding from 1910 to 1915 and spent his entire life on the family farm. His work makes use of a variety of supports: family portraits, imaginary calendars, school memories, scenes of farm life, often created on packaging, cardboard, or advertisements from his father’s store and post office. He also used pieces of wood or cardboard dipped in a mixture of soot, crepe paper, and saliva, and sometimes incorporated apricot pits, feathers, or string, evoking the techniques of contemporary artists such as Joseph Cornell or Robert Rauschenberg, whom he did not know.
The graphic minimalism of his drawings—ghostly, almost abstract figures—reflects a subtle gaze that transforms everyday life into dark tableaux. His work began to gain recognition in the 1960s, notably with a major exhibition at the Museo Reina Sofía in 2013.