During 2012, Winsor & Newton continued the International Artist Outreach Program (AOP), providing lectures of expert technical advice on artists’ materials and best handling practices. We aim to connect tertiary art students with technical information and ongoing advice, directly from colour manufacturers and materials research & development teams.

As part of the Artist Outreach Program, Winsor & Newton in Australia offered a scholarship program to assist students who are striving for success in the field of visual art.

Costello’s work is a study of 'rhopography' - the depiction of unassuming, ordinary objects that we constantly overlook in our hectic, modern life. His obsessively observed paintings imbue these objects with an 'iconic' status, forcing us to slow down and look deeper, questioning our preconceptions of function, form, time, place and beauty. Costello pays particular attention to how light interacts with the material qualities of the objects creating luminosity and the myriad of small, abstract arrangements of shape, colour and tone that engage and inform the viewer.

Through his work as an exhibiting artist and teacher, Costello will continue to explore the formal and perceptual conventions and assumptions underlying the still life genre, to demonstrate the relevance of 'realism' in the modern world.