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Miguel Hernández Bastos


Miguel Hernández Bastos was born and reared in Santa Bárbara de Heredia, a small town in Costa Rica’s Valle Central. Santa Bárbara is located in the heart of one of Costa Rica’s premier coffee growing regions. Miguel’s neighbors were farm hands and coffee pickers. Oxcarts over-laden with bags of just-picked coffee beans, sugar cane, tropical fruits and vegetables, creaked and lumbered their way through the streets from dawn to dusk. To this day, during the coffee harvest months of November to March, Costa Rica’s schools recess for the summer so that families can pick the crop.

Santa Bárbara, during the 1960’s, had changed little since colonial times. The majority of homes were still made of adobe or bareque, a combination of clay and cow manure, with bamboo poles used for reinforcement. Roofs were made of clay tiles baked in rustic kilns. The exteriors of the houses were painted bright white on the upper two-thirds, and sky blue on the bottom one-third. The floors were made of hardened earth, and swept clean several times a day. Intense orange passion fruit blossoms, shocking pink orchids and a myriad of other tropical flowers adorned the homes and gardens.



Early Influences

Several of Miguel’s uncles, on his mother’s side, were self-taught painters who created colorful folk murals for town festivals and religious celebrations. Miguel’s younger sister is an accomplished folk artist and high school painting teacher. A cousin, also on his mother’s side, is a talented painter. Yet, it was the bucolic beauty of his pueblo and the flora and fauna just outside of town which most inspired Miguel to begin drawing at the age of 6, and to later to become a painter.



Artistic Development & Training

El Colegio de Santa Bárbara de Heredia

When Miguel was 13 years old, he was formally introduced to art and to painting at the Colegio de Santa Bárbara de Heredia, a high school of approximately 300 students in Santa Bárbara. At the colegio he spent countless hours studying the paintings of El Greco, Rembrandt, da Vinci, Michelangelo and other European masters in the school’s art books, and dreamed of one day visiting the galleries which housed these paintings.

One art teacher in particular played a seminal role in Miguel’s development as a painter. His name was Luis Arias Benavides. Under Don Luis’ tutelage, Miguel honed his drawing skills, learned how to mix colors and acquired many of the other basic artistic skills which serve him to this day. Don Luis and Miguel’s other teachers also provided him with an easel, paints, brushes, books, materials, and the encouragement to become a painter.

At 14, Miguel was awarded a scholarship to study at the Instituto Técnico Don Bosco, a private school in downtown San José. At Don Bosco Miguel became acquainted with life in the city, attended art exhibitions, visited galleries, and met many of Costa Rica’s eminent artists and painters.

La Universidad Nacional de Heredia

When he was 15, Miguel began studying Fine Arts at the Universidad Nacional de Heredia, where he earned his bachelor’s degree in 1985. At this early age he was introduced to advanced use of shadows, proportion, movement and volume. His lifelong passion for drawing the human figure began at this juncture. Though drawing human figures is clearly one of Miguel’s fortes, he considers this skill a work in-progress.

Pratt Institute of Brooklyn

In 1987, Miguel received a Fulbright Scholarship and enrolled at the renown Pratt Institute of Brooklyn in New York. At Pratt, Miguel focused on further sharpening his drawing skills and use of color. After earning a Master of Fine Arts at Pratt in 1988, he returned to Costa Rica to live, paint and teach.

In 1995, he returned to New York and lived in Astoria. Miguel found living in New York sometimes harsh, but also found the city energizing and considered his experiences there essential in his development and maturation as a painter.

Costa Rica

In 2001, Miguel exchanged the hustle and bustle of the Big Apple for the laid back lifestyle of Costa Rica. He missed the verdant Heredia countryside, the fragrance of coffee blossoms, the oranges, mangoes, guavas and papayas that grow profusely in the fertile volcanic soil of his homeland, the flaming sunsets, and above all, the beauty and transparency of Costa Rican women.


Artistic Medium

He currently employs a variety of artistic methods. These include water color, oil painting, charcoal, and colored pastel pencils. Miguel describes his artistic expression in terms of realismo mágico (magic realism), which is an amalgamation of realism, surrealism, symbolism and naturalism. The Nandayure Paddling Canoe illustrations and the Nosara with Basket of Tropical Fruit illustrations by Nosara Tropical Gourmet Foods evoke these influences.


Exhibitions

Miguel has exhibited his drawings and paintings in galleries and museums in Costa Rica for well over a decade. His exhibitions include:

His works are currently on display in the:

Awards