About Green Hollow Creative
A practice built outside of the beige office.
Green Hollow Creative exists because the therapy that changed my life didn't happen inside four walls. It happened in the woods behind my parents' house, in the middle of a long and uncertain recovery, with a box of art supplies and a patch of Missouri forest.
How We Got Here
A head injury, a forest, and a long way back.
In 2018, I suffered a head injury that temporarily changed everything. I had to leave the life I was building, move back in with my parents in Missouri, and slow down in a way I had never been willing to before. At the time, I had already walked away from my plan to become an art therapist. I thought that chapter was closed.
What I didn't expect was the forest behind my parents' house. During the months I spent healing, I watched it through the kitchen window, walked it when I could, and sat in it when I couldn't. I noticed the cyclical rhythms of it — the way everything alive was also quietly in the middle of changing. My own experience started to make more sense through that lens.
After I recovered, I took a job as a nature play instructor at a therapeutic outdoor program in Olathe, Kansas. The program served children of all abilities on ten acres of land, in all weather, year-round. It was there I learned that there is no such thing as bad weather, only inadequate gear — and that sessions outside can hold emotional weight that sessions inside often cannot.
That experience changed my mind about art therapy. I enrolled at Emporia State University, completed my M.S. in Art Therapy Counseling, and built Green Hollow Creative as the practice I wish had existed for me in 2018.
— Madeline Holloway, M.S.
Education & Licensure
Training that takes this work seriously.
Art therapy is a credentialed clinical practice, not a hobby. The training behind it matters — especially when the work happens outside of a traditional office. Here's what's behind Green Hollow Creative.
M.S. in Art Therapy Counseling
Emporia State University. A CAAHEP-aligned graduate program integrating art therapy theory, counseling technique, and supervised clinical practice.
Master's Project: Nature-Based Art Therapy
Independent research and a full business design project focused on mobile, community-based nature therapy — the clinical foundation this practice is built on.
Prior Clinical Experience
Years of hands-on work with children of all abilities at a therapeutic outdoor program in Olathe, KS — all weather, year-round, full sensory engagement.
Ongoing Training
Continuing education in trauma-informed care, nature-based therapy methods, and wilderness safety protocols appropriate for outdoor clinical settings.
Licensure details and supervision information available on request.
Why This Approach
The research is clear. The experience confirms it.
Nature-based art therapy isn't a trend and it isn't soft science. It's a field with decades of peer-reviewed research showing that combining creative practice with outdoor environments produces therapeutic outcomes that neither element produces alone.
“Time in nature measurably lowers cortisol, heart rate, and blood pressure.”
Outdoor sessions aren't just pleasant. They produce physiological regulation that indoor sessions struggle to match — effects that persist for weeks after the session ends.
Forest therapy studies, published 2023.
“Natural materials open doors that traditional art supplies can't.”
Clients who freeze at a blank canvas often move freely with leaves, stones, clay, or charcoal. The novelty removes the weight of perfectionism and invites genuine exploration.
Chang & Netzer, 2019.
“Nature gives us metaphors that our nervous systems already understand.”
Seasons, weather, growth cycles, and the simple presence of living systems offer a shared symbolic language that supports processing grief, change, and the long work of healing.
Naor & Mayseless, 2021.
A full literature review supporting this approach is available on request.
How We Work
What makes Green Hollow different.
There are a lot of ways to do art therapy. There are a lot of ways to do nature therapy. The combination is still rare — and even rarer is a practice structured around mobility, accessibility, and meeting people in the environments where they already feel most like themselves.
A few things are worth knowing about how we work.
The studio comes to you.
The Airstream means sessions happen in the parks, neighborhoods, and communities where our clients already live. No traffic, no unfamiliar waiting rooms, no sterile smell.
The pace is slow on purpose.
Sessions aren't rushed. The natural rhythm of being outside — noticing, pausing, watching light change — is part of the therapeutic work, not a delay in getting to it.
Materials are often gathered, not purchased.
Leaves, stones, seeds, clay, and other found materials show up in sessions alongside traditional art supplies. Clients frequently find that the gathered materials carry more meaning.
Every client gets a real clinician.
This is not a workshop facilitator, a paint-and-sip host, or a wellness coach. Every session is held by a credentialed art therapist with graduate clinical training.
Accessibility is part of the model.
Sliding-scale sessions are reserved each quarter. Mobile-to-your-location sessions reduce the barrier of transportation. Non-clinical public settings reduce the stigma barrier that keeps many people out of therapy entirely.
The Mobile Studio
A small, well-made space that travels well.
The Airstream is the heart of Green Hollow's mobile practice. When weather cooperates, sessions happen outside of it — in the grass, under trees, along trails. When it doesn't, the interior is designed to feel like a continuation of the landscape: wood, natural fiber, plants, good light.
The space is small on purpose. It's meant to feel like a studio, not an office. Clients consistently tell me it's the first therapy space they've actually wanted to return to.
Beyond the Practice
A few things I care about.
Therapists are people, and it's fair for clients to want to know a little about who they're working with. Outside of the practice, I care about native and pollinator gardening, long walks in all weather, slow mornings with coffee and real books, and the theology of paying attention. I live in the Kansas City area with my family. I like showing up to my own life the same way I ask my clients to show up to theirs.
When You're Ready
Thank you for reading this far.
If something in this story resonates with yours, a free 20-minute consultation is the easiest way to see if Green Hollow is a good fit. There's no pressure and no obligation — just a conversation.