Paige DeVries: Curious and Intimate Paintings of Place
- Monica Loughman
- Oct 3
- 6 min read
For some, daily routines and rituals may sound like a recipe for a monotonous, boring life. For New Orleans based painter Paige DeVries, routine sharpens her curious and inquisitive eye. Daily walks with her dog locate DeVries’ current practice within the rhythms of her neighborhood. As her feet take the same steps twice a day, she’s developed a habitual noticing of small changes like the deterioration of a neighbor's sod or the subtle changes of an old oak tree. These changes are recorded in an archive of iPhone snapshots that show an intimate perspective on the cultivated order of suburban landscapes, the persistence of nature, and the peculiarities of human behavior.
DeVries’ sensitivity to environment can be traced to her upbringing in Anchorage, Alaska, where encounters with wildlife shaped a lasting reverence for the natural world. Her formal training at the Rhode Island School of Design (BFA) and the University of New Orleans (MFA) grounds this sensibility in a rigorous studio practice. Her work has been recognized nationally, including exhibitions at the Ogden Museum of Southern Art and the Contemporary Arts Center New Orleans, multiple features in New American Paintings, and residencies at the Joan Mitchell Center and the New Orleans Museum of Art.
ML: Place plays such an important role in your recent work. Can you talk about how your neighborhood specifically informs your painting practice.
PD: Oh yeah, definitely. I wasn’t intending to make work about my neighborhood, it kind of just happened. I walk my dog twice a day, every day. I pass the same houses, the same streets. Seeing the same things so regularly, you start to notice the smallest changes. Things don’t stay the same, and that gets me curious.
Nature creeps in. We're part of this larger natural world that’s adapted to us, and we’ve adapted to it. That tension is really interesting to me so, when I’m on my walks I’m constantly taking photos of these curious and interesting things. Over time I’ve built this huge catalog of images that sometimes I don’t look at for months. And honestly, the ones I think will make great paintings rarely do. If an image already feels complete, formally or intellectually, I usually leave it alone. It doesn’t allow for much creative intervention.
ML: I get that. It already says what it needs to. So what about the images you do choose to paint?
PD: Exactly. The images I choose to paint aren’t necessarily good photographs. It’s more about the gap between what I experienced and what I managed to capture. That gap gives me space to create something new: a blend of what was seen and what was felt. Through painting, everything shifts. One color choice can change the whole mood of the piece. Even what’s left unfinished becomes part of the composition.
ML: Can you speak more to what motivates you to take a picture and why you choose certain ones to paint?
Paige DeVries: I’m usually drawn to things that are funny or a little odd. Some people are out here really trying in their yards, and others are just doing the bare minimum to keep it from looking like crap. But there’s care in both. These little choices - how someone trims a bush or stacks their porch furniture - those are intimate gestures. That ties into how I want my paintings to be read. Not just as landscapes, but as portraits. You might never see the person, but this is how they’re showing themselves: a home, a yard, a neighborhood - it’s intimate.
ML: The sense of daily observation shows up in the way you frame your compositions. There’s repetition in the subject matter but there are also slight changes. For instance, some of your paintings look at the neighborhood through fences or walls, others open up into wide spaces. Can you speak to this type of change in perspectives in your work?
Paige DeVries: I’ve thought a lot about my relationship to looking—into people’s yards, through fences. There’s a voyeuristic element, and that’s something more commonly explored in photography. But there’s a difference between taking a picture and making one. Taking is an act of extraction; making is creation.
In painting, I try to be mindful of boundaries. I don’t want to cross them. I’m interested in intimacy, but also in respecting privacy. I try to tiptoe up to that line without stepping over it. But yeah. I think the common thread is that it's all part of what I see. I don’t show you everything, but it’s all from the same environment I move through. So even if the perspective shifts, the framework stays the same.
ML: The throughline is your curiosity, that feels like the connective tissue.
Paige DeVries: I think I’m drawn to elevating ordinary life because that’s how many of us live. Quiet, unremarkable lives. And that’s okay. That’s beautiful too. Maybe I’m doing it to make myself feel better about living a quiet life.
ML: We’ve talked about photography and how it’s a part of your painting practice. I wonder, do you have a background in photography?
Paige DeVries: I took two photo classes at RISD—manual and digital. After I moved here, I kept using my manual camera, but I never fully mastered it. A lot of photos didn’t turn out, and I wasted a ton on film in processing. But it was never about craft. I just wanted to capture what was around me. That hasn’t changed but now I mostly use my iPhone. I’m not interested in perfect pictures, I’m interested in noticing and the phone doesn’t pull me out of the moment.
ML: You recently were in residence at the Joan Mitchell Foundation. Was this your first residency?
Paige DeVries: Yeah, I’d applied a few times. The only other residency I’ve done was at the New Orleans Museum of Art. It’s hard for me to leave for long stretches so I haven’t applied to many residencies outside New Orleans. I’d love to, but logistically and financially, it’s not easy.
ML: That’s something I hear from a lot of artists. These programs are amazing, but you’re still paying rent, possibly leaving a job. It’s a big commitment just to have space to make work.
Paige DeVries: Exactly. So yeah, I’ve done two. Hopefully more in the future, but I need a job—I can’t just gallivant around. Some artists do the residency circuit, and that’s great for them. But I like routine. I’m not very nomadic.
ML: That makes sense, especially because your work is so rooted in place. Constant movement would shift everything. Though it would be interesting to see how you’d respond to a different environment.
Paige DeVries: Definitely. And maybe this is too personal, but I realized at Joan Mitchell that I struggle with the expectation to constantly produce - especially when people are watching. Sometimes you’re just making stuff that isn’t good, but you have to get through it. I’m a little more private that way.
ML: That’s an honest reflection. Did you have specific expectations going in?
Paige DeVries: Yeah. I had a show in July with my friend Madeline Kelly, so I planned to make work for that. I started painting what felt interesting, and all of it—directly or indirectly—ended up being about trees. In my neighborhood, you can’t look anywhere without seeing a tree. I got curious: how many ways can I see the same thing?
ML: That’s a great exercise and telling of how you approach your own work.
Paige DeVries: Yeah. I worked on it at Joan Mitchell, but I overcommitted to teaching. That’s the downside of doing a residency where you live: you can’t escape your life. I was teaching five classes, four of them new preps. I really learned my limits. But the residency was still important. I learned a lot about what works for me, and how to be gentler with myself and my practice.
Paige DeVries has recently shown at Good Children Gallery and Dillard University, where she currently teaches. To stay updated on Paige DeVries head to her website www.paigedevries.org and follow at @devries.paige
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