Artist Statement

My work explores kinship, mystery, and reverence for the human and more-than-human world through presence, listening, and reciprocity. My paintings, which are a collaboration with the memory of the water, address the wound of estrangement between ourselves, our communities, and the spirit of the land. My theory of change is rooted in Robin Wall Kimmerer’s sentiment that, “When we fall in love with the living world, we cannot be bystanders to its destruction.” I spend a lot of time engaging with the rapidly changing waterways of Bulbancha/New Orleans and in the Atchafalaya Basin. The light, water, flora, and fauna of the hard bottom forests and wetlands of Southeast Louisiana are especially present in my work and in my heart.   

My subjects include both the visible and invisible aspects of these intimate encounters, in waking life and in dreams, translated from direct observation and through the language of symbols.  I am especially interested in the long memory and interconnectedness of the waters of the world and of the body. As part of my practice I collect water from rivers, streams, lakes, oceans, tears, thunderstorms, bayous, puddles, and waterfalls. I leave offerings in the spirit of reciprocity, like a natural object, or a prayer or song, and then use the water I collect to make paintings. This practice inspires my curiosity: What medicine is there in the memory of the river? In the ocean? In the tears or the Sunday morning thunderstorm or the black waters of the bayou? How do we administer this medicine to ourselves and each other and the land that holds us, as an antidote to estrangement? 

Here in Bulbancha, which translates to “the land where many languages are spoken,” my practice is to continue to deepen my receptivity to more-than-human languages and ways of being. I consider each painting a record of all that we stand to lose as the planet warms and the land vanishes. My experience is that this sense of recognition and kinship leads me toward more meaningful stewardship, responsibility, and collective care of the places that I inhabit and that inhabit me. 

Bio

Madeleine Kelly is a New Orleans–based artist and educator whose work explores kinship, mystery, and reverence for the natural world. Working primarily in painting and printmaking, her practice reflects an ongoing engagement with observation, intuition, and the layered relationships between human and nonhuman forms. She received her MFA from the University of New Orleans in 2024. Alongside her studio practice, Kelly is a dedicated arts educator and currently teaches drawing and painting at the New Orleans Center for the Creative Arts (NOCCA).

Kelly is the recipient of the 2024 Homer L. Hitt Society Art Award and has participated in residencies including the King Range National Conservation Area Artist-in-Residence program (2024) and the Brackish Collective Artist Residency (2025). Her work has been exhibited regionally and nationally, with recent presentations at Good Children Gallery, Twin Steeples Arts Center, and Art Spot in Louisiana, as well as Whitespace in Atlanta, Georgia; the Berry Biodiversity Conservation Center in Laramie, Wyoming; and SCARF Gallery in Shelter Cove, California. Her work has been featured in the Hatched Podcast, New Orleans Arts Rag, Antenna Signals Magazine, Atlanta Magazine, and Slip Art Magazine.

Madeleine’s work is currently on view in the group exhibition Boundary Layers at Whitespace Gallery in Atlanta, Georgia (January 24th - March 7th).

She has two upcoming two-person exhibitions in New Orleans this spring:

Soft Wild, with Jacob Reptile at Lowpoint, March 14th - April 26th

Kindred, with Paige Devries at Good Children Gallery, April 11th - May 3rd