Ellen Greene

I am a seeker of my own internal equinox. A seeker of the light and dark balance within my psyche through an intuitive image making process grounded in collage, painting, hand embellished fiber works, and mixed media installation. I seek to create images/objects from my embodied experience as a struggled toward an authentic expression. Somewhere between the sweeping scope of a fairy tale and the intimacy of a diary, my work attempts to recenter myself as the hero of my own story.

In my thesis work, I am conceptualizing Intergenerational trauma (IT) as ungrieved grief, which is passed down in the family and manifests as various disorders in subsequent generations. Through exploring my own family’s IT story, supported by existing IT research, I created an arts based grieving protocol that can explore, shift and contain stuck negative family narratives. My thesis research also informed by years of my art practice where I explored my experiences of mental illness particularly as a mother.

My emerging art therapist identity has expanded my possibilities for new material explorations which I have incorporated into my art/research process i.e. family photographs, nature elements and boxes. Through this work, I hope to affirm my commitment to the creative process which I believe has the ability to resolve grief and lay out an action plan to explore intergenerational trauma themes. The desired outcome of this work is to inspire others to become curious about their own family secrets/stories and have their own experience of resolving trauma through the art making process.