Paige DeVries

Region: MFA Annual

 My work highlights the mundane visual language of the suburbs. These paintings begin with observations of my neighborhood: home exteriors, plants, and animals that make up my local landscape. I look for subtleties in these spaces, which point to how we inhabit and effect our environment. Starting with my own reference photographs taken on long walks, I use unconventional paint colors and distorted light to explore the line between the banal and the sublime.

Though people are not the explicit subject of the paintings, the impact of the human hand on our habitat is always present. People are intrinsically connected to the nature they cultivate; in turn, nature adapts and asserts itself back into the spaces around us. My paintings attempt to understand this relationship of beauty, nature, and the uncanny in these ordinary spaces.