Bringing Art and Life to the Ocotea Boutique Hotel | An Interview with Muralist Majo Rodriguez

Any artist who’s had a chance to visit Costa Rica will tell you that the experience is inspiring. The landscapes are dramatic and striking, the natural world is vibrant and exploding with color, the sunsets are breathtaking, and the blend of welcoming hospitality and pulse-pounding adventure provides a broad spectrum of emotions from which to draw. 

So it’s no surprise that Costa Rica has such a rich artistic culture. Traditional crafts like masks and pottery trace their origins back to the indigenous inhabitants of the land here, and painters since the colonial era have been seeking the skies and sunsets of Costa Rica to better understand the richness and softness of color. 

And in the modern era, Costa Rica’s art culture has continued to evolve, with fashion, modern art, videography, documentary, music, cuisine, and as many other forms of artistic expression as you can imagine.

There was never any doubt that the Ocotea Boutique Hotel would feature artistic expression. The design of the hotel itself, the thoughtful planning of the gardens, and the elegant interiors are all unique artistic gifts in their own right. But it was also vital to the vision of the Ocotea Hotel to include contributions from Costa Rica’s art community.

Today, we explore the work of Majo Rodríguez, who lent her skill and vision to the murals on the walls of the Ocotea Lobby, Nectandra Restaurant, and the Ocotea Rooftop Lounge. Below, enjoy some insight into her vision, process, and achievement in creating these gorgeous contributions to the hotel.

Insights and Inspiration From Our Chat with Botanical Artist Majo Rodríguez

Majo Rodríguez is a botanical artist in nearly all forms and mediums of artwork, with experience in a variety of fields ranging from hand-drawn scientific artistry and diagrams to digital advertising, commercial prints, fashion, interior and exterior murals, and much more. 

It was her extensive pandemic-era mural work that first caught the eye of the Ocotea team, especially Andrés, one of the hotel’s lead interior designers. Majo’s style and botanical inspiration seemed a perfect fit for the style and atmosphere of the hotel, and after the exchange of a few digital mockups, it was clear that Majo’s mural style fit seamlessly into the spaces of the Ocotea Hotel. In short order, Majo and the Ocotea team moved from renders and mockups and dove into the mural projects. 

The Vision for the Murals

“The styles of the 3 murals are different, but obviously there’s some coherence because they were all painted by the same artist in similar spaces. At the same time, visitors can find “something new” in each of them, which is both because of the incredible flora and fauna in Monteverde, as well as Ocotea’s desire to offer something contemporary, both artistically and as a hotel.”

The Ocotea Team already had some references, as well as a mood board of the styles for each space. From there, Majo dove into researching both the endemic and most iconic species of Monteverde, ultimately creating a series of sketches for three different murals — each with their own distinct elements, identities, and art techniques, and yet all closely related and fitting the atmosphere of the spaces they would inhabit. 

For instance, the Entrance mural has a mixed style with some full-color applications, some outlined elements, and some flat-painted ones. The selection of flora and fauna gives a delicate yet contemporary look, which was chosen for the feel of the entrance and lobby, where people will be walking by and maybe taking a selfie with the hummingbird through the mirror.

The Nectandra mural is more prominent, with a different full-color look. The restaurant mural focuses more on filling the space, so when people are having breakfast or dinner there, they can feel really surrounded by this tropical garden. The combination of rich greens on the walls and the actual garden on the other side behind the glass doors completely transform the feel of the restaurant and is just one example of how Majo played off of the surrounding spaces.

For the rooftop, Majo and the Ocotea Team chose a dark background because the sun reflected intensely on white walls some times of day, once again responding to a practical need of the space. However, any artist will tell you that constraints drive creativity, and the need for a dark background created an opportunity for colors to pop in contrast with the dark green. And there was no better fit for the Rooftop Lounge than a portrait of the iconic Resplendent Quetzal.

Bringing the Mural to Life

Once the initial styles and designs had emerged from the collaborative sketching process, Majo began the mural process. 

First, she projected a sketch (outlined drawings) directly to the wall, laying out the featured plants and animals of each mural, and filling in the sketch with a little touch of improvisation based on the needs of the actual space. As Majo tells it, there’s always a little bit of room for inspiration and magic in the margins of a design process, so even with a full plan, each mural can only be truly completed in the space in which it inhabits. 

From there, the painting process begins. Majo would make a plan on what to paint first, and in which order, and then proceed to select the paint colors needed and begin with the fun part of actually painting. 

There are always challenges in painting a mural, usually the upper parts which need to be painted on a ladder or scaffold, but in this specific case, Majo says that the biggest challenge as she was painting the mural was that she was 3 months pregnant at the time of painting, and had to adapt the process to flow with her body’s needs, adapting to waves of nausea or fatigue. 

However, Majo explains that even though painting while pregnant made the murals more challenging than usual, the project was also an amazing opportunity to connect with herself, and she feels that the result was even more emotionally powerful because of it. 

“It was a chance to really listen to my body, and I think that the murals benefitted from the sense of presence I felt at that moment in time. I had long, quiet afternoons painting alone with just my thoughts, my paints, and all the considerations of bringing a new life into the world. It gave me so much calm, so much purpose, and I think that each element was painted with extra heart because of it.”

A Life of Its Own

In the subsequent months after completing the murals, Majo returned to her home province of Heredia to deliver her child, and while the challenges of a new mother have prevented her from visiting Monteverde to see her work once more, the project still holds a very important place in her heart. 

“That mural is very important to me because it was a beautiful process with beautiful people, to create art in a beautiful place, and all of this taking place during such a powerful, important time in my life. 

The doctors told me around that time that my baby was the size of a blueberry, which was kind of weird because we’d have blueberries with breakfast at Nectandra every day. But that time is stuck in my mind, and whenever I see the photos, I get a sense of joy knowing that the art that came from that time is bringing life to the people who see it.”

A Place Where Inspiration Strikes

We’d like to thank Majo for taking the time to sit down with us and offer us this fascinating insight into bringing this art to life, and how closely tied it remains to such an important time in her life. 

You can see Majo’s work in the Ocotea Lobby, in Nectandra restaurant, as well as the Ocotea Rooftop Lounge when you come to visit. You can also keep up with her ongoing work through her Instagram (@entropia_illustration) and her website.

And if you’d like to learn more about Monteverde, or you’re interested in visiting, you can reach out to us at info@ocoteahotel.com.