Costa Rican culture

A group of women living in a remote Costa Rican village decided that they were tired of working their fingers to the bone every day. Instead, they became artists.

An exhibit of their work will be on view now through Sept. 30 in the Beverly Corcoran Memorial Gallery in the Pittsburg Memorial Auditorium lobby. A public opening reception will be held at 1 p.m. Sunday.

The exhibit is coordinated by Penny Armstrong, Pittsburg, an admirer and collector of the paintings.

The group, comprised of eight women, call themselves Corazones Valientes, which translates as “brave hearts.”

“It has a double meaning for them,” Armstrong said. “Not only does it apply to them, but also honors Becky McElroy, whom they knew as Becky Hart,  which is her maiden name.”

McElroy, who now lives in Atlanta, Ga., was a Peace Corps worker in Costa Rica, and spotted their paintings as she was walking down a street. She was so impressed that she tracked down the women and arranged for them to go to San Jose for a few painting lessons.
That was an act of courage for the women.

“The men in their lives didn’t want them to go to San Jose, they thought the women might be running around,” Armstrong said. “They didn’t have any place to stay or any money for food. One of them told me that she remembered sitting in a park in San Jose eating a raw plantain because that was all she had.”

Armstrong discovered Corazones Valientes in 2000 on a visit to Costa Rica.

“I was  in a book store and the paintings were arranged above the shelves,” she said. “They leapt out at me.”

Shopkeepers  told Armstrong that the paintings were done by a group of women who lived on top of a mountain. Five years ago Armstrong and a friend decided they would try to find the artists.

They had one clue to their location — some of the paintings showed a volcano.

“The women live near Arenal, an active volcano about two hours from San Jose,” Armstrong said. “In 2008 I and group of my high school friends and their spouses were on a trip to Costa Rica. My Costa Rican sister and I sent everybody else to a hot springs, got a bus and went up to the top of the mountain, where the women live, but nobody was home. Then our driver discovered that the bus had a flat tire.”
At that moment a jeep drove up. In it was one of the women, named Ivannia, and her husband.

“They took us to the house of her mother, Luz,” Armstrong said. “We dropped in on them out of a clear blue sky on a Saturday afternoon. Luz has six or seven children, and they were all there. They were stunned. We arranged for them to come to the resort where we were staying with 50 paintings and the people at the resort went crazy. These women have been my friends ever since.”

She has 15 of their paintings on her study wall at home, and her collection will be on view a gallery display case. The other paintings on view will be available for purchase, and prizes range from around $40 for the smaller ones to $400 for the largest.

“One of these women can live for a month on the sale of a large painting,” Armstrong said.

In bright acrylics, the paintings depict lush tropical flowers, jungle animals such as monkeys and anteaters, and people in life situations. “The Mother-in-Law,” shows a woman spying on her son and his wife through a bedroom window. Others are of sweethearts, a woman and daughter and plantation workers harvesting coffee beans.
“They paint what they know, and the more you look at their paintings, the more you see in them,” Armstrong said. “They have a common studio where they paint together every Monday, then they also paint at home.”

She said that McElroy talks with them by Skype every Monday and does all their managing. The former Peace Corps worker arranged a showing of their work in Atlanta, and Armstrong decided to see if she could arrange one closer to home.

“Just for fun, a friend and I made cold calls on several Kansas City galleries, and in October the Mattie Rhodes Gallery called and wanted to do a show,” Armstrong said. “I knew we’d arrived when the director of the Nelson Art Gallery walked in and bought one of the paintings for her personal collection.”

When the paintings leave Pittsburg they will head to St. Petersburg, Fla., for another show.