We are delighted to welcome Lorena Villalobos to the MÍRAME roster and to introduce her work to our audience.
We first encountered Lorena Villalobos's work a little over a year ago, and have been returning to it ever since. Last year we visited Lorena and her husband Michael at her home in Escazú, and spent time in her workshop, located in her stunning garden with a view across the hills of San José. It's an intimate space — tools laid out, works in progress.
Lorena showed us how she works — the cold wax applied and then scraped back, gouged, reworked — removal as well as accumulation. Seeing her in her workshop, hearing her talk about her practice, reveals another dimension to the surfaces of the work.
On Cold Wax
Cold wax is central to much of her painted work. Mixed with oil paint, it gives the surface a translucent, mineral quality — light held within the layers, colour shifting depending on how the work is lit. The controlled scraping and deliberate accumulation are evident across the works now on her artist page. Water runs through a lot of it — recurring across medium and subject, from forest estuaries to the deep blue of ocean at night. It is a technique with a tradition in Costa Rica, and seeing Lorena work with it in her studio, the confidence and physicality of her approach immediately resonated with us.
Ecos del Estuario, 2020, oil paint and cold wax on canvas board
The works on her page range from 2012 to the present, opening with a group of acrylic on canvas pieces that showcase her botanical practice. Fotosíntesis is large scale — looking at it, you feel as though you are peering through a microscope, the micro world of plant life filling the canvas, leaf forms and seed heads in deep green, the detail extraordinary. By 2020, with Ecos del Estuario, the cold wax has entered the practice — and with it, that distinctive scraped and layered surface that defines so much of what follows.
Fotosintesis, 2012, Acrylic on canvas
On Printmaking
Running alongside this painterly practice is an equally serious engagement with printmaking. Her vintage Charles Brand press in her Escazú studio has been central to her work for decades, and the collagraphs she produces on it, such as Lo que Brota en Silencio(title image), have a surface quality quite distinct from her paintings — ink pressed into paper, texture built through the plate rather than the brush. The natural world runs through both practices — forests, estuaries, botanical forms, water — the material approach evolving from one body of work to the next.
On the Work
Brio — acrylic on canvas, fragments of form in black, gold and turquoise — has a kinetic energy that pulls you into the composition immediately. Frutas Extrañasis more intimate — teal lines moving through an ochre ground, figures emerging within the botanical forms, the human and the natural barely distinguishable. The title image Pachamama is another example of figuration making its way into the compositions, with a ghostly face visible between the trees.
Pachamama, 2020, oil paint and cold wax on canvas
Sedimentos de Luz shows the cold wax at its most physically demanding — scraped and built until the forest has the density of the paint. Luz en La Profundidad #1 and #2 take the practice into deep water — blue and black gouged and layered, luminous forms emerging through the centre of each canvas, the cold wax giving the blue the quality of light moving through water.
Each time we show Lorena's work to someone new, the response is immediate — and we find ourselves seeing it differently too. In recent months, several works have already found homes with collectors in Guanacaste, as well as in the United States and Canada.
Luz en La Profundidad #1, 2025, oil and cold wax on Artboard
Lorena has exhibited nationally and internationally for more than four decades. A painter and printmaker, she works across oil, acrylic, collagraph, monotype and cold wax, bringing the same rigour to each medium — from the intimate scale of works on paper to the physical scale of large canvases. She is among twenty-six artists named Modern and Contemporary Masters in Central American Modernism (Ford and Snider, 2018), a publication that positions her alongside the defining figures of the region's twentieth-century tradition.
The breadth of her practice is reflected in the reach of her exhibitions. Lorena has shown across Costa Rica, Europe, the United States and China — from the Golden Hall of the Costa Rican Art Museum to the World Art Museum in Beijing, and venues across Spain, France, Los Angeles and Mexico City. Her work is held in collections including the Banco Nacional de Costa Rica, the Four Seasons Papagayo and the Los Sueños Marriott.
Art historian and former Costa Rican Minister of Culture Carlos Francisco Echeverría has described her work as among the most significant to have emerged from the region in recent times.
Explore Lorena's artist page to see available works, or get in touch if you would like to discuss her practice or a specific piece.
Email: [email protected]
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Ecos del Estuario, 2020, oil paint and cold wax on canvas board
The works on her page range from 2012 to the present, opening with a group of acrylic on canvas pieces that showcase her botanical practice. Fotosíntesis is large scale — looking at it, you feel as though you are peering through a microscope, the micro world of plant life filling the canvas, leaf forms and seed heads in deep green, the detail extraordinary. By 2020, with Ecos del Estuario, the cold wax has entered the practice — and with it, that distinctive scraped and layered surface that defines so much of what follows.
Fotosintesis, 2012, Acrylic on canvas
Pachamama, 2020, oil paint and cold wax on canvas
Sedimentos de Luz shows the cold wax at its most physically demanding — scraped and built until the forest has the density of the paint. Luz en La Profundidad #1 and #2 take the practice into deep water — blue and black gouged and layered, luminous forms emerging through the centre of each canvas, the cold wax giving the blue the quality of light moving through water.
Each time we show Lorena's work to someone new, the response is immediate — and we find ourselves seeing it differently too. In recent months, several works have already found homes with collectors in Guanacaste, as well as in the United States and Canada.
Ecos del Estuario, 2020, oil paint and cold wax on canvas board
The works on her page range from 2012 to the present, opening with a group of acrylic on canvas pieces that showcase her botanical practice. Fotosíntesis is large scale — looking at it, you feel as though you are peering through a microscope, the micro world of plant life filling the canvas, leaf forms and seed heads in deep green, the detail extraordinary. By 2020, with Ecos del Estuario, the cold wax has entered the practice — and with it, that distinctive scraped and layered surface that defines so much of what follows.
Fotosintesis, 2012, Acrylic on canvas
Pachamama, 2020, oil paint and cold wax on canvas
Sedimentos de Luz shows the cold wax at its most physically demanding — scraped and built until the forest has the density of the paint. Luz en La Profundidad #1 and #2 take the practice into deep water — blue and black gouged and layered, luminous forms emerging through the centre of each canvas, the cold wax giving the blue the quality of light moving through water.
Each time we show Lorena's work to someone new, the response is immediate — and we find ourselves seeing it differently too. In recent months, several works have already found homes with collectors in Guanacaste, as well as in the United States and Canada.
