In February 2024, I spent about three and a half months in beautiful, sunny, and warm Costa Rica. For most of that time, I was living at an artist residency called the Mauser Foundation Artist Residence, run by a woman named Heather. Heather was so warm and welcoming — I immediately felt safe and at home. Looking around me, I saw a charming Costa Rican house surrounded by the majestic jungle and a few cows, like the ones you find in India, on the property right next to us.
During my three months there, I became friends with many artists from around the world. They taught me things from their experiences and perspectives, and I will cherish my time at the Mauser Foundation for the rest of my life.
Heather is very active in the Costa Rican art scene and has many art-related projects that enrich the lives of everyone who lives in or visits her part of Costa Rica. One such project was her idea of an open-air art walk, where visitors could stroll around the beach town where she lives and view murals created by artists who have stayed at the Mauser Foundation.
One day, she asked if I wanted to paint a mural. It had been a dream of mine — one yet to be fulfilled — and I jumped at the opportunity. So we began planning.
Heather started scouting for the best locations for the mural while I searched through ideas of what I wanted to paint. Then we struck gold! She found a wall along the main road, and I found my inspiration.
I’ll tell you now — painting in the midday Costa Rican sun is no joke. I was drenched! But I was also fulfilling a dream of mine.
You know, for me, painting can sometimes come with a ton of anxiety. It can be thoughts like “What if I mess up?”, “What if it’s not good enough?”, and “Do I really know what I’m doing?”. When it’s a canvas, I can always just get a new one — but this was a permanent wall!
Thoughts like this can come at any moment while painting, and I think it’s fear creeping in. Imagine someone standing a few feet away, throwing little rocks and pebbles at you to ruin your game. That’s kind of how I learned to see it. And just because fear throws its little rocks on me, it doesn’t mean I have to let it derail me and stop me in my tracks.
Fear can do whatever he wants — but what can fear accomplish if I don’t feed into his story? So the secret, I’ve learned, is to just keep moving, and moving, and moving… and eventually, you’ll be the one who wins.
And that’s how it was. I painted and painted and painted, and one day, I felt the mural was finished. I stepped back, looked at what I had done, and felt so proud of myself for what I had accomplished.
Fear tried to knock me out — and he was tough. But like in a boxing match, I just kept painting and hitting that wall, until fear disappeared. And through our struggle, maybe we had created something really great together — something that went beyond the borders and limits of the physical wall, and that could only be sensed in the spirit of the human mind who would walk past the mural for a brief moment in time.
