Discovery by Sketch
Flora Típica de la Zona Pehuenche
In April/May 2025 and the following March 2026, my husband and I backpacked through the heartland of Chile's Pehuenche people, The Pehuenche are subset of the Mapuche, South America’s fourth-largest indigenous group. The Mapuche were the only original inhabitants to successfully repel both the Inca and the Spaniards.
Pehuenche life and culture revolves around the Araucaria tree which dates from the age of the dinosaurs. Daily, I added to accordion sketchbooks, documenting the ecosystem of these fascinating trees. We met no other backpackers, just locals on horseback traveling between their summer grazing areas and their winter communities.
The painting below was created in March 2026, en route. Again, I used a 22”x30” piece of hot press paper, folded accordion style. We were on a continuous route from the previous year. We hiked south to north, from the bottom of the painting to the top, zig-zagging back and forth from lower to higher elevations. Left to right on the painting represents west to east — which also meant low to high elevation, since the border follows the crest of the mountains.
I explored pen textures this year — including by adding bilingual text for movement in the background.
The image below is organized around the Araucaria tree, or Pehuén (Araucaria araucana). In this part of the Andes, the trees grow in a narrow elevation band around 800 meters to 1600 meters above sea level. This species of Araucaria is found only in Argentina and Chile between the latitudes of 37°20°S to 40°20°S.
