This past week, we were proud to debut the work of Isaac Loría as part of Andaz Art Week, welcoming international guests as well as those from the Papagayo Peninsula into conversation around the contemporary art scene in Costa Rica.

Isaac is a self-taught artist who lives on a farm near Herradura, just north of Jaco. He often straps his canvases to the farm’s structures, working outdoors in direct response to the changing conditions around him. The result is a body of work that feels spontaneous, yet grounded. While his process is immediate and intuitive, it is informed by an inspiration of classical masters, such as Velázquez.

For many visiting the hotel, it was their first encounter with Isaac's work, and with the evolving artistic scene in the country. Read on as we discuss our recent studio visit, Isaac's new paintings, and his wider practice.

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Studio Weather

Studio Visit: Belinda Seppings visits Isaac Loría

When we visited Isaac at his studio in Herradura, we were met by the same dramatic conditions that thread their way into his canvases. Torrential rain, coming in sideways, soaked us completely as we arrived in an old jeep with no doors and no roof. It was a memorable welcome, and one which felt oddly appropriate.

Isaac's paintings reflect this exact kind of tension. Not the cliché of tropical lushness, but something more precise: the shift in the light just before a storm, the sudden glare of midday heat, the heavy silence of morning. His Costa Rican landscape painting directly responds to these conditions, as he pins raw canvas to posts and beams around his family’s farm, allowing the weather itself to influence the process. The result is a body of work shaped by attention and instinct.

Costa Rican Landscape painting: Morning Light, Midday Heat, and a Memory of Departure

The exhibition at the Andaz included new works such as "Herradura, Morning", which offers a distinctive reading of the land. Isaac responds to his environment, and this is evident in the textures, and gestures of his brushwork, as well as his expressive colour palette. We see muddy ruts from passing animals, the white glare that bounces off foliage or the ground, and the heat rising from distant hills. He paints from contact, with place, with weather, with memory, and "Herradura, Morning" encapsulates this approach.

Isaac Loría, Herradura, Morning, Oil on canvas

Another highlight of the Andaz presentation was "The Fields, After Degas", which highlights Isaac's art historical influences. It stands apart from the other works because it embeds a line of figures taken from Degas’s "Young Spartans Exercising", which features a group of young men and women challenging one another. Isaac's version is a personal narrative that uses this well-known image as scaffolding.

The artist describes the work as rooted in a memory of departure. The field in the painting recalls a place he once lived and had to leave behind. At the time, his life felt uncertain. He likens that moment to watching water evaporate from the canvas surface, leaving behind faint cracks - unpredictable, delicate, and yet still there. These traces became part of the composition, and in a way, part of the story. The figures, which in Degas’s version were ambiguous and confrontational, are here spectral. They suggest the idea of arrival, of movement between places, and the emotional weight of what is left behind.

Isaac Loría, The Fields, After Degas, Oil on canvas

Loría notes that Degas was depicting a time not his own, a historical moment already softened by distance. That same layering of eras appears in "The Fields, After Degas": a personal timeline overlaid with collective memory.

“These people may suggest the arrival in this new land,” he writes, “as a process that repeats itself and is stored in the memory of humanity.” The work becomes a meditation on dislocation and resilience, and how lives, like surfaces, carry forward even after rupture.

One To Watch

While Isaac has recently been included in exhibitions such as Seguimos: Contemporary Art in Costa Rica at Craig Krull Gallery in Santa Monica, he is still early in his public career. What makes his work compelling is its responsiveness to Costa Rican conditions, and the fact it doesn’t treat the landscape as a backdrop. The social, historical, and ecological elements are embedded in the material.

We’re honoured to be supporting Loría at this point in his development. He is a young painter working from the ground he stands on - sometimes quite literally soaked to the bone.

One of the real pleasures of Andaz Art Week was the opportunity to introduce his Costa Rican landscape painting to an international audience. Conversations were wide-ranging, with many guests encountering Costa Rican contemporary painting for the first time. Placing two of his works with a collector was a particularly rewarding moment, and confirmation that his paintings resonate well beyond the local context. Isaac Loría is, without question, one to watch.

Costa Rican landscape painting | Isaac Loría | MÍRAME