What Grows Here: Paige DeVries and Madeleine Kelly
Opening: Saturday, July 12, 6–9 PM
Exhibition Dates: July 12 – August 3, 2025
Good Children Gallery is excited to present What Grows Here: Paintings by Paige DeVries and Madeleine Kelly. Join us for the opening reception Saturday, July 12 from 6–9 PM.
What Grows Here: Paige DeVries
Paige DeVries is a New Orleans based painter and photographer. Her work examines the interface between people, nature, and the suburban environment of her neighborhood and city. DeVries grew up in Anchorage, Alaska where she developed an appreciation and reverence for wildlife that continues to impact her artistic sensibilities and interests.
DeVries’ artwork has been shown locally and nationally. She has a BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design and an MFA from the University of New Orleans. She has participated in residencies at the Mitchell Center and the New Orleans Museum of Art. Her work has been featured in New American Paintings multiple times and has exhibited work at the Ogden Southern Museum of Art and Contemporary Arts Center of New Orleans. For more info visit: https://www.paigedevries.org/
What Grows Here: Madeleine Kelly
Madeleine Kelly is an artist and educator currently living in New Orleans. She received her MFA from the University of New Orleans in May 2024. She is the recipient of the 2024 Homer L. Hitt Society Art Award, and is the 2024 King Range National Conservation Area Artist-in-Residence. She has shown work locally at the Good Children Gallery, the Bywater Art Lofts Gallery, and the Fletcher Hall Gallery at the University of Lafayette. Her work has been featured in the New Orleans Arts Rag and Antenna Signals Magazine. For more info visit: https://madgkelly.com/
In What Grows Here, artists Madeleine Kelly and Paige DeVries explore their personal and intertwined relationships with trees – as companions, sources of refuge, and mirrors of inner landscapes. Their works emerge from everyday encounters with trees in their neighborhoods, spaces often passed by without a second glance. For both artists, trees have been places of emotional and physical sanctuary. They stand as silent witnesses to grief, contemplation, and fleeting joy. The works in this exhibition reflect a reverence for how trees hold memory, shelter, and a sense of constancy in the shifting rhythms of our daily lives.
DeVries and Kelly’s works explore the psychological and symbolic presence of trees, revealing them as thresholds between inner and outer worlds. Together, their paintings ask viewers to pause and consider what grows here – not just in soil and root, but within ourselves, shaped by the landscapes we move through daily.
What Grows Here is an invitation to notice, to reflect, and to honor the life that surrounds us, asking us to see the familiar anew.