In Focus | Sofía Ruiz | The Neighbors
New Painting The Neighbors by Sofía Ruiz Costa Rican Artist
After our last In Focus on landscape hyperrealism, this week we turn to the imaginative figurative painting of Sofía Ruiz. Her new work The Neighbors has been selected as a semi-finalist in this year’s International Art Renewal Center (ARC) Salon Competition (alongside another of her works, Alike), the world’s largest competition dedicated to 21st Century Realism.
Sofía Ruiz, The Neighbors, oil and acrylic on canvas, 120 x 120 cm | 47.2 x 47.2 in.
Why This Image
The Neighbors presents us with a strikingly strange yet oddly tender scene: a young boy in green glasses and a cream sweater sits stiffly on a bench, flanked by a fantastical pink creature with bulbous black eyes, clawed hands and jagged teeth. The creature leans close, one clawed arm wrapped almost protectively around the child, while the boy clutches his hands together in silence. Between them rests a balloon, as if to mark this meeting as an occasion, half-celebration, half-nightmare.
The Neighbors speaks to the paradox of childhood imagination: the way it can give rise to comfort and unease. The boy may not smile, but he accepts the presence of the figure beside him. The balloon, an object of innocence, amplifies this ambiguity: is this friendship or menace? Sofía leaves the question suspended, and that suspension is precisely the point.
I really enjoy that the pink figure, which could be viewed as a grotesque character with its claws and jagged grin, is somewhat familiar, even companionable. This painting has a sense of calm. The boy’s posture is tense, his expression inscrutable, but there is no panic. Instead, there is a quiet coexistence, as though Sofía is reminding us of the imagined allies we once created as children, even if they looked monstrous to others.
Sofía Ruiz Costa Rican artist visualises connection in unexpected ways. Here, companionship transcends species or logic; what matters is the intimacy of the embrace. The child’s trust in this imagined figure signals the openness of a mind not yet confined by rigid categories of what is real or possible.
When I look at this painting, I don’t find it frightening, though its strangeness is undeniable. I feel it evokes the imaginative freedom of childhood, those private worlds children construct, where a toy, a shadow, or a figment of the mind can be as real as any living being.
I also find the background landscape intriguing. It appears barren, with tree trunks devoid of green foliage. It also shows traces of a Costa Rican landscape, with the muted tones recalling the dry forest. This encompasses Sofía’s practice: her work often teeters between the uncanny and the familiar. We think we recognise forms and creatures; we think we recognise landscapes that could exist, yet she keeps us in an imaginative space.
Memory and Disconnection | Sofía Ruiz Costa Rican Artist
Sofía has long been inspired by the psychological atmosphere of her upbringing, where fractured memories affected her sense of place and belonging. In The Neighbors, the landscape functions as a site of projection, a stage on which memory, fantasy and emotion converge. To understand Sofía’s work, it is important to know her biography. Raised in a household marked by her mother’s amnesia and her grandmother’s Alzheimer’s, her earliest experiences were influenced by disconnection and instability. Names, dates, even identities could shift overnight. She recalls feeling invisible, a stranger in her own home.
That sense of alienation infuses her practice. Children in her work are often suspended in uncertain states, paired with fantastical beings that both anchor and unsettle. In The Neighbors, the pink figure may be grotesque, but it is also present, attentive, even affectionate. Where memory falters in life, imagination supplies constancy.
As Sofía has said: “My characters are envisioned as part of an inner, surreal world… a place filled with imaginary, strange creatures and disconnected objects.” - Sofía Ruiz Costa Rican Artist
International Recognition
Sofía is one of Costa Rica’s most distinctive contemporary artists, her work characterised by psychological depth and fearless imagery. The Neigbors condenses the concerns that run throughout her practice: memory, otherness and the fragile bonds that sustain us.
Her work has been shown at the Museum of Costa Rican Art in San José, the Palais de Tokyo in Paris, and at the European Museum of Modern Art in Barcelona.
Sofía has gained significant international attention. Before The Neighbors was named semi-finalist in the 2025 ARC Salon (alongside another of her paintings Alike), her painting Mysterious Allies reached the final of the 2024 Almenara Art Prize, one of the most prestigious competitions for contemporary realism. She was also awarded the “Best Overseas Artist Prize” at the Women in Art Prize in London, recognition that highlights the growing impact of her practice abroad and also her position among an international generation of women artists redefining figurative painting today.
In The Neighbors, as in much of Sofía’s practice, the child and the creature are not enemies but companions. They are neighbors, bound together in a fragile coexistence. And in that coexistence lies the unsettling truth of Sofía’s work: comfort and unease, imagination and memory, are never far apart.
If you are interested in learning more about Sofía Ruiz’s practice, or in acquiring one of her works, please get in touch with us at MÍRAME Fine Art.
MÍRAME Contact Information:
MÍRAME Fine Art
Email: [email protected] Follow: Facebook | Instagram
Sofía Ruiz Costa Rican Artist | In Focus: The Neighbors