Kelly Greene is a multi-disciplinary artist, and a Kanyen’kehà:ka (Mohawk) member of Six Nations of the Grand River Territory as well as of settler ancestry. She is a mother, gardener, environmentalist, writer, and language learner. Her work includes painting, sculpture, installation, and photography/photo montage.
Greene has lived in London, Ontario since 1989 and obtained a BFA from the University of Western Ontario 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.
When making art, in an attempt to slow the mass-consumption of our Earth's gifts that are more commonly referred to as commodities, Kelly creates works using discarded or repurposed materials and minimal tools and pigments. Topics in her work reflect the detrimental state of our environment due to human negligence, injustices to Indigenous people and land by colonial governments and churches, but moreso honouring the strength, knowledge, and humour still alive amongst Indigenous people, despite it all and hopeful the next generations will have Earth's gifts still available to them.
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 as well as other renowned galleries and museums 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. Kelly has been awarded grants from the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council and was honoured to be selected as the inaugural Indigenous Artist in Residence at Western University in 2021-2023.