Biography

For 16 years she lived in the Osa Pennisula, on the Pacific southwest coast of Costa Rica (1984-2000), where the wild flora and fauna inspired her colorful early paintings. The series of acrylic paintings, Visions of the Rainforest, reflect her immersion in the rainforest and the rural life of the Osa. The next period in her artistic development emerged in the volcanic landscape of Lake Arenal (2001-2006), where she produced a series of paintings entitled Rebirths. In these oil-based paintings she explores the female psyche by re-inscribing icons such as the moon, serpent and flower-often negatively associated with being female -- to recapture their power and emancipate the "New Woman" as well as herself.

In 2010, Odio Yglesias embarked on a new artist endeavor adding sand to her technique of clay painting-begun in the Osa in 1998-with the series entitled Precolumbian Iconographies. In this recent series she combines Precolumbian art iconography with elemental shapes and pigments as a counter discourse to the rush toward a predictable and progress-based modernity and urban life of asphalt found in San Jose today.