In Focus: Penumbras by Latin American watercolour artist Juan Carlos Camacho

Next week, Galería Talentum in Barrio Escalante, San José, opens a new exhibition dedicated to the city landscape as subject. The show features five Costa Rican artists, each with their own room in the gallery’s historic building. Among them is MÍRAME painter Juan Carlos Camacho, showing a series of new watercolour paintings.

Ahead of the opening, I've chosen one painting from his presentation to highlight. My favourite is a small watercolour called Penumbras, and for me it encapsulates much of what makes Juan such an interesting artist to follow.

Juan Carlos Camacho, Penumbras, Watercolour on paper

Why This Artwork | Latin American Watercolour

Watercolour is often thought of as a gentle medium, associated with transparency and delicate washes. The medium has a long tradition in Costa Rica, where it has been used for generations to record landscapes and daily life. It is also part of a broader Latin American watercolour practice, where the medium’s portability and immediacy made it a natural choice for artists documenting cities and environments. Juan works within this lineage, but pushes it forward with his architectural eye and by treating watercolour as a way to depict atmosphere and the feeling of a place.

Juan's approach is fast, assured and at times bold, applying washes with confidence and layering tones to build weight. Penumbras demonstrates this vividly: the dark pools of indigo shadow on the street, the thick canopy overhead and the quick dashes of colour that suggest figures or café tables are laid down without hesitation.

What strikes me about this painting is its atmosphere, despite being modest in scale. The red stop sign in the foreground is an arresting presence; it interrupts the scene and creates a quiet barrier, leaving the viewer to look in from the outside. The green shutters on the building and the white umbrellas of an outdoor terrace place us immediately in a Mediterranean setting. Yet it is not a typical postcard image. The foliage at the top of the composition forms a heavy frame, its washes darkening the mood, while the street beyond recedes into suggestion. Juan reduces detail as the eye travels further back, leaving just enough line and colour to indicate the presence of buildings.

The result is a painting that gives you a sense of location, as well as show you that time is passing. It's a moment that might be overlooked, caught in shifting light.

A Travelling Artist

Penumbras was painted in Granada, Spain. Juan has long travelled with sketchbooks and paper, producing watercolours on site wherever he goes. In Costa Rica, his subjects are the streets of San José, rural agricultural buildings or simple fences that portray daily life. Abroad, he applies the same observational eye to unfamiliar architecture, different light and new rhythms of movement. I love the thought of Juan on his travels, walking by a particular scene that spontaneously takes his attention and stopping to record with his paint brushes.

Wherever Juan chooses to paint, he does so with his typical preoccupation with mood. He pays close attention to how light filters through trees, how shade sits heavy on the ground, and how heat alters the way a street is perceived. In Penumbras, the layering of greens and indigos suggests the heat of a southern Spanish afternoon, while the quick marks of colour signal the presence of life without spelling it out.

For me, this is where Juan’s work resonates most strongly. Whether in Costa Rica or Spain or anywhere, he finds ways to paint what it feels like to be in a place, the sensory charge of light, shadow and colour, rather than focusing only on its outward appearance.

I was also drawn to Penumbras as a reminder that Costa Rican artists are not confined to local subjects. Here, a street in Spain is filtered through the vision of a Latin American watercolour artist, and in doing so it becomes part of a larger story about mobility, observation and the act of recording.

Juan Carlos Camacho

Born in San José in 1962, Juan Carlos Camacho studied architecture before turning fully to painting. That background informs the way he approaches buildings in his work; they are the focus of many of his paintings, rarely simply backdrops for other details. His paintings of Costa Rica often focus on agricultural buildings, fences, or modest houses, structures that might appear incidental, but which he paints with intimacy, and close attention.

For Juan, buildings carry character in the same way that figures or animals might for another painter. They are personalities with presence, shaped by use, weather and context. In Penumbras, that sensitivity is clear: the shutters, umbrellas and façades are not generic features but part of a lived environment. An example of this is his new painting Vestigio, which is a scene from San Antonio de Belén, Heredia and will also be featured in the exhibition at Galería Talentum.

Over the years, Juan has exhibited widely in Costa Rica, Spain and the United States, and his works are now held in collections internationally, from Canada to the UK. He continues to work primarily in oils and watercolours, often painting directly on site and always attentive to the ways buildings and spaces reveal human presence.

Juan Carlos Camacho, Vestigio, Watercolour on paper

See Juan's Work in Person

Juan Carlos Camacho’s Penumbras is part of a broader display of five Costa Rican artists, each responding to the theme of "The Urban Scape". Other artists showing alongside Juan are Jose Pablo Ureña, Carolina Rodríguez, Sophia Machado and Sebastián Mello.

The exhibition opens Tuesday 7 October at Galería Talentum in Barrio Escalante, San José - everyone welcome. The exhibition runs until 30 November, with each of the five participating artists presenting their work across separate rooms in the gallery.

We encourage you to visit, spend time with Juan’s watercolours, and see how these seemingly ordinary street scenes hold layers of atmosphere and light. You can also visit Juan's artist page on MÍRAME to discover some of this Costa Rican watercolour scenes that have been painted.

Latin American watercolour artist Juan Carlos Camacho can also take on a commission, painting any scene unique to you.

MÍRAME Contact Information: MÍRAME Fine Art

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Juan Carlos Camacho | Latin American Watercolour Artist | MÍRAME