Ecuador
Quito, Tena & Baños · 2018
I spent a month in Tena painting with materials I found locally: house paint, burlap, charcoal, and Amazonian pigments.
Erin McGee Ferrell — painting of a covered rooftop with drying laundry in Tena, Ecuador. From the series made with house paint, burlap, and natural pigments.
Erin McGee Ferrell — a Tena streetscape with yellow taxis, pedestrians, and overhead wires, painted during her Ecuador project.
Erin McGee Ferrell — a street in Tena, Ecuador, with a white car, colorful buildings, overhead wires, and green hills.
Erin McGee Ferrell — a potted plant study from the Ecuador series, with layered earth tones, olive green, white, and visible material texture.
An easel, brushes, and paint containers on a rooftop in Tena, Ecuador, where Erin McGee Ferrell worked.
Erin McGee Ferrell’s plein air painting setup on a Tena street, with a painting, brushes, and locally sourced supplies.
Elías Mamallacta Alvarado, a Kichwa painter using ancestral traditions and natural paints and pigments from the Amazon forest, with Erin McGee Ferrell’s handmade-paper sketchbook, Ecuador, 2018. His interest in better paper helped inspire the proposed Rooftop Papermaking Company in Tena.
Visitors discussing Erin McGee Ferrell’s Ecuador paintings displayed together in Tena.
Elías Mamallacta Alvarado demonstrating painting with natural pigments during Erin McGee Ferrell’s 2018 Ecuador project in Tena.
Amazonian plant and mineral pigment samples on handmade paper in Erin McGee Ferrell’s sketchbook, Tena, Ecuador, 2018.
Learning through materials
I learned about natural pigments from Elías Mamallacta Alvarado, a Kichwa painter, and women in Tena’s marketplace. I painted on rooftops and streets and tested pigments on handmade watercolor paper.
Rooftop Papermaking Company
Those experiments led me to propose a papermaking workshop in Tena, producing paper for local artists. My breast cancer diagnosis interrupted the plans. I am still seeking funding.