Kelly Greene is a Kanien’kehaka (Mohawk) and Sicilian multi-media artist, a member of the Six Nations of the Grand River Territory, and a descendant of Turtle Clan. Her mediums include painting, sculpture, installation, and photo montage.
Kelly has lived in
London, Ontario since 1989, where she was honoured to give birth and raise her two amazing children, and where
she still resides with her husband. She obtained a BFA from Western University in 1994 after beginning her visual art studies at the University of New
Mexico in Albuquerque, where she moved with her family when she was a child.
She has exhibited in Canada and the United States
for over thirty years in solo and group exhibits, primarily at the Woodland
Cultural Centre in Brantford, Ontario but was also fortunate to exhibit at galleries in Banff, Alberta; Vancouver, B.C.;
Montreal, Quebec; Ottawa, Thunder Bay, Toronto, and London, Ontario; Santa Fe,
New Mexico, and Howes Cave, New York. Her work is in several public and private
collections, and in 2012 and 2015 she was commissioned to complete two
permanent outdoor installations at the Woodland Cultural Centre. She has been
awarded grants from the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts
Council and was honoured to be chosen as the first Indigenous Artist in Residence
at Western University in 2021.
Her art focuses primarily on environmental, Haudenosaunee, and auto-biographical topics, using humour when possible. Recognizing the impact colonization has had on our Earth and the First People who have always lived on the land now known as Canada, Greene specifically refers to the Haldimand Treaty granted to her ancestors of Six Nations, as well as the Mohawk Institute Residential School, or “Mush Hole”, where her beautiful Grandma attended in the 1920’s. Another concern is the current plight of bees, vanishing due to human activity and overpopulation. The ever-alarming condition of our planet has inspired Greene to create works that represent our Mother Earth as human, appealing to our species' egocentricity, hoping empathy will be instilled and respect given so future generations will be able to thrive, not only survive.