A story about creativity, healing, and finding your artistic voice.
- Chuz Vargas
- Jun 20
- 5 min read
This year, my heart cracked open and colors poured out. I have often said the past 10 years or so of my life have felt like going through a karmic washing machine, I have been pulled and stretched to my limits, often feeling like I might not make it to the other side. If you have read any of my other blog entries, you might have learned a little bit about my experience with loss, grief and troubled relationships that left me feeling dull and worn down for years.
Around the middle of February this year, I embarked on a journey to work at the Envision Festival in Uvita, Puntarenas, a large immersive music festival on the pacific coast of my country Costa Rica. My two good friends Daniel Wesson and Orion Tiscornia were in charge of the art gallery this edition, and asked my sister and I to help them set everything up for success. I was skeptical at first, not because the opportunity didn't sound exciting, but because I had only gone to this festival once in 2016, exactly a decade ago, and felt as if this time I was in a very different headspace. Approximately 40 artists and roughly five thousand people were expected to show up when the doors opened, and I knew I had to prepare myself to be surrounded by people 24/7. My friend Daniel, who is also an artist I admire greatly, assured me that we would have fun in the process and we would all be looking out for each other.
I packed my bags and decided I would go, but on one condition: I was bringing with myself a question, spoken out loud to the universe. My query was, what in the world do the people who can afford a week at a music festival abroad do for a living? How do they balance their work and personal life to afford such a luxury? I am and have always been curious about different ways of living, so I figured this would be a good opportunity to expand my mental horizons.
For a week before the gates opened to the general public, we worked hard and shared quality time with the artists, prepping their artwork, learning about their process and techniques, listening to their stories and pouring over their pieces until I felt familiar enough to pass on some of this insight to visitors when they arrived. We shared meals and beers in the hot sun, long conversations about our dreams, and together, piece by piece, the gallery came to life.
Something was happening quietly inside me during these days, something I wouldn't fully comprehend until I left a week later, once the festival had wrapped up.
When I arrived back in my home in Monteverde, I was no longer the same person. There was a hunger in me that could only be satisfied with colors, so I did what made sense in that moment: I bought a set of acrylics and some canvas and began pouring out what was growing like bubbles inside me.
Once I began, there was no stopping; the paintings were coming out of me with a force that shook me. Was this always meant to happen? Had the dam finally broken?
I suppose it's important to give you some context on my life; I was born in 1993 in a small rural town in Costa Rica. Monteverde, a community kissed by the clouds and bustling with biodiversity, was and continues to be my sacred home and magical playground, a land with dirt roads and deep green forests. I grew up in a mixed community of Costa Ricans and Quakers who migrated from the US in the 50's, which meant I was speaking and thinking in both english and spanish from the moment I sputtered out my first words.
My family and my house, much like the environment around it, was not exactly the traditional Latino home. My mother, a painter and an artist herself, was my portal to the world of creation, always encouraging me to play with paint and ceramics. Her career in the arts and her independence was a feminist statement in itself, being the first woman in her family to break the generational pattern. My father, a poet and cherished community leader, shared my love of books and told me many stories and tales of his childhood that fed my already active mind.
As I grew into a teenager, I stepped further and further away from art, almost in a way of rebelling against my parents. A bit silly, looking back on it, but I guess teenagers are known for their silly behaviour. I studied Sustainable Tourism and in my early 20's I moved to NYC on a whim, where I became a photographer. Slowly, creativity found a way to peek through, and I had a lot of fun with my film and digital cameras, building a strong portfolio and working as a photographer full time when I moved back to Costa Rica. You can read all about my photography journey here.
Circling back to the question I packed and took to the festival with me, I'll tell you what I discovered; I wasn't looking in the right place. I was looking out at a large crowd with a vague question in my hands, when in fact, the answers were inside that gallery. I was looking on a superficial level for something that was much deeper. I was looking at money as the only form of abundance, when in fact, money was only a result of a much deeper belief that had to be nurtured inside our minds and hearts.
What I discovered in these artists I shared time with was pure passion! They had something I admired and longed for, they believed in themselves, they trusted their gifts and leaned into their talents. At some point in there lives they had made an agreement with themselves to live a creative life, to pour into their own hearts and souls and build a reality where they could travel and create simultaneously.
I learned that discipline and commitment can take you further than talent, for so many talented people are still waiting for luck to knock on their door. I learned that working on your self confidence can bring you closer to your dreams at a higher speed, because knowing what you are worth will have you aligning with infinite possibilities and losing less time on trying to impress others.
Today, I am a 32 year old woman who found a way to heal her heart through art. A woman full of questions, with a curiosity so large it overwhelms me some days, but I've found a healthy way to channel those emotions with love. All the parts that were broken in the journey to find myself are slowly fading into scars that I carry proudly, for they are now part of the story and no longer the repeating headliner. I currently have my series "Perlas de la Divinidad" in exhibition at Galería Micelio, and do live painting sessions there regularly, in hopes that it will inspire others to pursuit their creative fantasies in a world that needs more art, more love, more than ever.
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