A renewed love of art helps Madison Greene transition to life after basketball
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Madison Greene at the “Intersections” art exhibit pop-up, March 28,. 2025 | Danielle Williams
Soon after the end of the college basketball season, Greene stood up in front of a much different crowd
Imagine spending over 20 years with a singular focus. Sure, there are extracurricular activities, other responsibilities, and time spent with friends and family, but for a vast majority of college basketball players, the court looms over it all. Whether it's traveling for hours to play in youth AAU matchups, skipping high school hangouts to practice, or hopping on a plane to fly across the country with a university’s name stitched across your chest —
Ohio State women’s basketball guard Madison Greene lived that life.
The Pickerington, Ohio native, raised just outside of Columbus proper in the halo of suburbs that surround the state’s capital, went from highly touted youth basketball player to top 100 recruit to Big Ten champion. For six years, nearly a fourth of Greene’s life, the guard’s play sprinkled on top of key moments in the program’s history.
Then, on March 23, 2025, it all ended. Ohio State took a four-point lead into the second quarter against the
Tennessee Volunteers in the Second Round of the NCAA Tournament, which vanished quickly. The Scarlet and Gray never recovered.
Now, for that vast majority of players, minus a select few who make playing basketball professionally a career, the final defeat is a screeching halt for a major chapter of life.
Greene knows about screeching halts. Despite making it into the starting five as a late recruited freshman and being a quiet leader in her years in Columbus, Greene is most known, basketball-wise, as a player whose career was hampered by severe injuries. In both 2021 and 2022, Greene tore her ACL and required a combined two years of recovery before her final year and a half as a Buckeye.
Those final two seasons saw Greene move into a role player for Ohio State. She played behind fellow 2019 freshman recruit Jacy Sheldon and freshman star Jaloni Cambridge.
So, after that final loss for any player, what’s next? Many move into the “real world,” find jobs and become “productive members of society,” while some try anyway to stay in the sport, and who can blame them? Spend all of your formative years around a game as fun as basketball, and compare it to that “real world,” and the better option is clear.
For Greene, it was not the sport that dictated what she did next, but the injuries. More specifically, the life passion that came from those years of recovery. Five days after that loss, Greene was back in front of the public but not on a basketball court. Greene stepped onto the art studio floor and showed elements of herself that no fan saw in six years at Ohio State.
Flower Girl or I am not broken
Madison Greene
Flower Girl or I am not broken by Madison Greene
Madison Greene
Flower Girl or I am not broken art piece description, by Madison Greene.
“Flower Girl or I am not broken” was the first piece of art that Greene created during the recovery from her first ACL tear. The piece uses paint, flowers, and real shards of glass to represent the different parts of Greene’s life. The pieces that make Madison Greene Madison Greene.
Greene wrote in the piece’s description, “if the painting was missing any of these three mediums, it would be less interesting, less special and less beautiful,” and it is not hard to see the connection between the broken glass and the trials Greene faced in her six seasons at Ohio State.
Art interpretation is up to the person interpreting the art, and this one tells a story. It also serves as a reminder that a person is not only the bad things that happen but the sum of the pain, celebrations, and beauty that make life.
During the season, Greene spoke more about this specific piece, explained this “self-portrait,” and more on Ohio State’s social media.
That work of art was one of two pieces by Greene displayed at Ohio State’s Urban Art Space from March 28 through April 5, part of their “Intersections” pop-up exhibit. Friend and former team manager Danielle Matthews urged Greene to submit her art to try and get into the exhibit. Greene followed the advice and nearly missed that she was selected.
“I didn’t know that I got accepted, because they told me through an email,” said Greene. “I had just gotten a new email that I put in there, so I did not realize that they had sent me that I got accepted.”
Fortunately for Greene, she eventually checked it and five days after her basketball career ended, stood in front of her work for friends, family, and complete strangers to see and read.
Now, for a top-tier college athlete who has played in front of crowds of tens of thousands of people, standing for a few hours does not seem too difficult, but while sports and art overlap, there is a different level of vulnerability.
“Basketball is definitely more people watching you, and it’s a bigger audience, and they really just see the outside. They see the sports side of you,” said Greene. “But with the art stuff, it just felt more personable.”
For hours, Greene stood by her paintings to talk to fellow artists, visitors of the exhibit and family, friends, and former teammates. It was an opportunity to build a community where relationships are built on art that originates from complicated, sometimes nagging, thoughts and feelings for Greene.
“I’ve always enjoyed art, like even when I was little,” said Greene. “I never was like, amazing at it or put a lot of effort into it, I would just like to have a random art class, and just do what the teacher told me to do. But I think that painting definitely kind of started the whole trajectory.”
It was no coincidence that the first piece of art she created, which was not assigned to her by a high school art teacher, featured the broken elements. While Ohio State went on to win the Big Ten Regular Season title in the 2021-22 season, Greene was with the team every moment of the surprise season, but always on the sidelines, watching practice or taking shots on her own.
Greene rehabbed her torn ACL and took time away from being able to play the game she loved. Years of spending time dribbling a ball and living on the court, gone in an instant. Art was not to fill Greene’s downtime, which is not much for a Big Ten Distinguished Scholar Athlete. No, it was part of Greene’s recovery.
Not only did Greene recover twice, but she also strengthened her desire to express herself creatively through art.
“A lot of the time, it really just happens randomly,” said Greene. “I’ll get thoughts in my head like, ‘Oh, that’s a cool idea,’ or sometimes like it’s just emotions or experiences or thoughts that I continuously have something that’s been lasting in my mind for, let’s say, a couple weeks or a couple months. Then I’m like, ‘Oh, this feeling or thought means something to me.’”
One of Greene’s moments of inspiration turned into a drawing of a phoenix. The fiery bird that rises up from the ashes, often used to represent coming back to life. A situation all too familiar to Greene.
“Something that I wanted to remind myself about before I even drew it or before I came up with the idea was that I’m powerful, that I’m magical, that I’m beautiful, I’m lovable, and that I’m valuable,” said Greene.
She reminded herself of that when she made the phoenix painting that still hangs up in Greene’s room, which in and of itself serves as a constant reminder to herself about who she is as a person.
The Meaning is in the Middle
Also created in 2022, “The Meaning is in the Middle” focuses on the juxtaposition of life and death, fear and beauty. Between a face of life and another of death is a Venn diagram-like effect with the two overlapping eyes bursting into an area of stars. Instead of contrasting them, it shows how the ends of the spectrums of life are connected. Spiders and butterflies live in harmony.
The pieces submitted and on display at the exhibit center around Greene’s identity, each coming from those thoughts and feelings on her mind that she wants to get out.
Now, Greene herself is in the middle of one of the largest life transitions people will face — the end of formal education and the start of the rest of your life. For Greene, it will not be spent trying to earn a training camp contract in the
WNBA or globe-hopping across Europe and Asia for opportunities to continue playing basketball. The love of the sport is there, but Greene’s rediscovery of art has taken control.
Through friends and other connections, Greene has interned for different artists and industries. From pressing wedding bouquets into pieces of art with a local floral preservation company called Story Pressed or shadowing event planners and florists, Greene is taking something that was once a tool in rehabilitation to become the focus of how she wants to live the rest of her life.
“I want to do something that I’m passionate about, something that’s creative, something that has variety, and it’s fun,” said Greene.
That does not mean that it will be easy. It’s well known that the arts do not compare to the business or tech worlds in terms of income, but for Greene, right now, it’s about the process of learning while she spends time in the middle of this life transition.
The art exhibit represents that movement. It’s the first step of a long journey for the former basketball star. Once basketball stopped looming over each part of her life, it did not come with fear to share her art. Sure, there were the usual feelings associated with losing a game of sports, especially at the highest level, but the usually quiet and reserved Greene was the exact opposite about sharing her artwork.
“It kind of lifted my spirits in a way to be able to express myself and do something that I’ve never done before. I think it’s really just going to help me figure out what I want to do with the rest of my life,” said Greene. “I’m not really sure yet, obviously, but I think having that exhibition, after the tournament, it was exciting, just to see where life could take me in the future.”
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