What Moves My Work

In 1998, upon my arrival in Costa Rica, I truly learned to look.

Until then, I had been seeing—but not looking.

This new country, so different from my own, turned everything into a spectacle: the lush nature with its endless shades of green, the architecture, the cars, the faces I encountered… Everything was new to my eyes, which had to learn another language.

Years later, during the Covid lockdown in France, life slowed down within the confines of our home. That loss of freedom awakened in me the need to paint every day.

Painting became my way of translating my vision of the world and of the human activities that fascinate me — my own intimate language.

Deeply influenced by naïve painters such as Joop Plasmeijer and Henri Robert Brésil, my work seeks to capture the quiet joy I find in observing the people around me.

I am drawn to the beauty of the ordinary.

Whether I paint a forest or a market square, the human presence is never far away.

I love being the spectator of simple gestures, and I invite the viewer, in turn, to look, then to see, and finally to observe — to share with me my passion for detail and for the poetry hidden in everyday life.

It was in 2020, during the first French lockdown, that Leti Stagno allowed herself to paint every day. 

In 2023, she exhibited for the first time at the 30th edition of the Salon des Arts in the city of Chambourcy, France. 

During this event, she was approached by the Association des Peintres de Chatou, with whom she took part in a group exhibition in July of the same year. 

After moving to Costa Rica, she exhibited there in March 2025 at the Art Fest Curridabat Aleste, organized by the Galeria Matiz.