Artwork: Dry Forest Woman, from the series Guanacaste Wooden Woman.

In this second work, the Guanacaste Wood Woman reappears as the central figure and a link between identity, nature and territory. Her body, criss-crossed by grain patterns reminiscent of wood, and her Guanacaste savannah hat once again establish her as a contemporary personification of Guanacaste.

Facing her stands the white-tailed deer, a national symbol of Costa Rican wildlife and a characteristic inhabitant of the tropical dry forest. The animal approaches an open pitahaya and feeds on it, creating an intimate scene that speaks to the natural relationship between the species and the ecosystem that sustains them.

The white-tailed deer, the pitahaya and the dry forest also take on another dimension within the artwork’s artistic exploration: they form part of the imagery depicted on the reverse of the Costa Rican ₡1,000 banknote, dedicated to the dry forest ecosystem. The painting draws on these elements from our monetary iconography and transports them into a new visual realm, transforming symbols that circulate daily in our hands into a reflection on heritage, biodiversity and identity.

The Wooden Woman observes the scene without imposing herself upon it. Her presence bridges the gap between the human and the natural: she belongs to the same territory as the deer, the pitahaya and the tree. The organic forms that run across her body reinforce this continuity, as if the landscape had left its own veins upon the figure.

The limited palette of earth tones, blacks and light shades, punctuated by the reddish hue of the pitahaya, draws the eye to what remains essential. The fruit becomes a small nucleus of life within the composition.

Rather than reproducing the image of a banknote, the work extracts its symbols and returns them to the landscape from which they originate. Thus, what we recognise as a monetary representation regains its living dimension: the forest becomes territory once more, the deer returns to inhabit it, and the Wooden Woman becomes both a witness to and a part of that memory.

Ultimately, the work invites us to look anew at what we have seen so many times and to ask ourselves how much we really know about the history, biodiversity and heritage we hold in our hands.