She Rides — Garner Large Gallery, Louisville, KY | November 2025–March 2026

Opening Reception Friday November 21, 2025 6-8 pm

Erin McGee Ferrell [b. 1972, Louisville KY] is an oil painter and educator of 35 years. Ferrell earned a BFA in Studio Art and a minor in African Studies at Mount Holyoke (1994), and a Teaching Artist Certificate in 2011 from UARTS Philadelphia. She studied with Carolyn Pyfrom, Robert White, and Alyssa Monks. Particular influences are Bo Bartlett, Edouard Vuillard, Joseph Solman, Robert Hamilton, Carolyn Plochmann, and Henry Taylor.

Ferrell is a 3-time cancer survivor, turned patient advocate and advocate for art as a support for wellbeing and healing in medical settings. She has lived and taught in many places across the United States, and recently traveled to work and exhibit in Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Dubai, and South Korea. 

Meanwhile, Ferrell has touchstone childhood experiences in Louisville, where she was born and lived until 1990. She graduated from the J. Graham Brown School, took art classes through the Louisville Visual Arts Saturday High School class program, and had her first exhibition at Swanson Cralle Gallery on Bardstown Road.

Ferrell returned to Louisville in 2024. Her 2025 exhibit at Garner Large (“She Rides”) includes new works painted in her Louisville studio.

Gallery hours are Thursday through Saturday 1-5 pm, by chance and by appointment. Text to confirm: (502) 303-7259

She Rides marks a powerful homecoming for internationally recognized painter Erin McGee Ferrell. Born and raised in Louisville, Kentucky, McGee Ferrell returns after 35 years of working as a professional artist across the United States and abroad to present this deeply personal exhibition at Garner Large Gallery. On view from November 2025 through March 2026, She Rides celebrates a full-circle moment in a remarkable career defined by bold color, physical gesture, and narrative power. The exhibition centers around an 18 x 6-foot feature painting, also titled She Rides, and showcases large-scale oil works that reflect Ferrell’s evolution as an artist and storyteller. Though known internationally for her Girl and Horse series, this exhibition expands beyond a single theme to encompass works from her Maine studio and new Kentucky-inspired paintings that bridge past and present. She Rides is both a visual autobiography and a homecoming—an exploration of memory, identity, and belonging from an artist whose journey has always been rooted in courage, curiosity, and the enduring pull of home.

Artist Statement

My art career is equally about improving technique and marketing. My middle school English teacher told my mom I could sell ice to an Eskimo. The art world is a very difficult Eskimo to sell to. 

Moving from Philadelphia to Maine, I grew discouraged at coastal art collectors not caring for my gritty, urban fire escape renderings of Portland. Thus was born the Fuck You Lobster Series. 

Before October 2024 [return to Louisville, KY] I had never painted a horse. Having moved many times, I knew it would take seven years to really be embedded and make money in a new location. The Girl And The Horse series began as a marketing tactic but grew to mean more to me. 

I am the Girl. The Horse symbolizes Kentucky and home. Riding horses was never something my family could afford for me to do. Throughout my life  when people found out I was from Kentucky, they always asked me if I had a horse. Only rich people had horses and could afford to ride.  

As I painted, the horse and riding the horse began to take on a new meaning. Just as wealthy people can be around horses, so can wealthy people be career artists.  My artist community is full of independently wealthy painters and second-career artists with large pensions.  As an extreme go-getter, I’ve never been able to figure out how to make it financially as a visual artist.  Most artists I know teach, work several jobs, and/or give up. 

When students of mine ask me how to make money as an artist I usually tell them to marry someone who can provide health insurance. Recently a mother of an inner city highschooler asked me if her daughter could really make a viable income as a painter. The mother wanted her daughter to major in nursing, and minor in art. The daughter wanted to go to an art school. I said nowadays it is very difficult, and to not go to art school but have a larger educational foundation. The girl and her family want her to be financially self-supporting. 

The Horse is a creative career, be it artist, poet, dancer, or musician. 

The final painting in this show is Oh Yes She Did!  The Girl does daring acrobatics with a “you thought I couldn’t do it” attitude. A “fuck you” feeling emerged. Most creatives I know in 2025 are trying to justify value against AI and economic collapse. They are justifying an impractical vocation. We know what we do is of value. But, how to prove it to the growing population of people with dwindling art education, while the haves collect art for investment rather than pleasure, and the have-nots are unable to buy unless work is priced far below what the work is worth. 

GARNER LARGE GALLERY. alley entrance through orange door, 1013 Bardstown Rd, Louisville, KY 40204 (502) 303-7259