Grey was born on November 29, 1953, in Columbus, Ohio.[3] His father was a graphic designer and artist.[3] Grey was the middle child.[4] He attended the Columbus College of Art and Design for two years before dropping out.[5] Grey went on to study art at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts in Boston in 1975.[6][7] At the end of art school, Grey met his wife Allyson at a party where they both ingested LSD and later bonded over the experience.[6] He reported that the LSD was initially given to him by his professor.[6]
Career
A viewer in front of Grey's art in 2007
Grey learned anatomy by working to prepare cadavers for dissection at Harvard Medical School's anatomy department, a position he held for five years.[7] He worked as a medical illustrator for approximately ten years in order to support his studio art practice.[3] Grey also taught anatomy and figure sculpture at New York University[7] for a period of ten years.[4]
Grey is best known for his psychedelic paintings and illustrations.[1] In 1986 Grey's artwork was exhibited at the New Museum in New York City.[1]
Alex and Allyson Grey have worked collaboratively and have openly supported the use of entheogens.[1]
Mending the Heart Net, an interactive installation artwork by Alex and Allyson Grey, was displayed at Baltimore's American Visionary Art Museum in 1998–99 as part of the exhibition "Love: Error and Eros".[8]
In 1999, the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego held a mid-career retrospective of Grey's work titled "Sacred Mirrors: The Visionary Art of Alex Grey".[9] That same year, Grey was noticed by guitarist Adam Jones of the progressive metal band Tool, who later featured his artwork on their albums Lateralus and 10,000 Days.[7]
Grey has been a keynote speaker at conferences in Tokyo, Amsterdam, Basel, Barcelona and Manaus.[4] In the 2012 book Psychedelia, author Patrick Lundborg credits Grey as "the leading psychedelic artist of today, and also one of the foremost proponents of Visionary Art as a style."[13]
Since 2020, Alex Grey and Allyson Grey have created a podcast that features a variety of topics. Episodes include musings about religion, science, visionary art, nature, meditations, and full moon ceremonies. Mr. and Mrs. Grey have interviewed artists, philosophers, YouTubers, musicians, and PhD candidates.[14]
Grey founded the Foundation for Sacred Mirrors (CoSM), a 501(c)3 as a place to permanently display the Chapel of Sacred Mirrors. Additionally, he created the Church of Sacred Mirrors (CoSM).
CoSM allows visitors a place of respite and worship while admiring Grey’s artwork and writings. Other invited artists can display their works at the CoSM. According to CoSM’s website, “The mission of CoSM is to build an enduring sanctuary of visionary art to inspire a global community.”
Located in Wappinger, New York, visitors can stroll the 40 acres while enjoying art by Alex Grey, Allyson Grey, and Amy Senn, to name a few. Alex Grey, Allyson Grey, and various other artists created murals that can be found in the cafeteria at CoSM. The property contains a 10 bedroom Victorian guest home that is decorated with art in the visionary style of Grey. A large amount of Grey’s work is displayed in Entheon, a converted carriage house on the property. The Greys are currently raising funds for the completion of Entheon. Visitors will enter through bronze doors (see below) that display “Creating a Better World” by Alex Grey.[15]
While in Entheon, visitors can also admire Grey’s works Kissing, Copulating, Pregnancy, Birth, Gaia, Net of Being (featured by the band Tool), and Nursing.” Viewers will also be able to enter the Chapel of Sacred Mirrors.
Grey's project The Chapel of Sacred Mirrors (CoSM) first opened to the public in Chelsea, New York in 2004 and drew visionary and psychedelic art fans to the site for four years until its closure in December 2008.[1] The CoSM featured 20 life-size paintings of standing human figures Grey created in the early 1980s.[1]
Grey's paintings are a blend of sacred, visionary art and postmodern art. He is best known for his paintings of glowing anatomical human bodies, images that "x-ray" the multiple layers of reality.[2] His art is a complex integration of body, mind, and spirit. The Sacred Mirrors, a life-sized series of 21 paintings, took 10 years to complete, and examines in detail the physical and metaphysical anatomy of the individual. "The inner body is meticulously rendered - not just anatomically precise but crystalline in its clarity".[16] Many of his paintings include detailed representations of the skeleton, nervous system, cardiovascular system, and lymphatic system. Grey applies this multidimensional perspective to paint the universal human experience. His figures are shown in positions such as praying, meditating, kissing, copulating, pregnancy, birth, and death.
"It is the light that is sublime in Grey’s oeuvre - which is the most important innovation in religious light since the Baroque - and that makes the mundane beings in them seem sublime, in every realistic detail of their exquisite being".[16]
His highly detailed paintings are spiritual and scientific in equal measure, revealing his psychedelic, spiritual and super-natural view of the human species.[17]
In 2002, Holland Cotter, New York Times art critic wrote, "Alex Grey's art, with its New Age symbolism and medical-illustration finesse, might be described as psychedelic realism, a kind of clinical approach to cosmic consciousness. In it, the human figure is rendered transparently with X-ray or CAT-scan eyes, the way Aldous Huxley saw a leaf when he was on mescaline. Every bone, organ and vein is detailed in refulgent color; objects and space are knitted together in dense, decorative linear webs."[18]
Writing
In 1990 Grey published a large format art book, Sacred Mirrors: The Visionary Art of Alex Grey. The book included essays on the significance of Grey's work by Ken Wilber, and by New York art critic, Carlo McCormick.[19]
Grey's The Mission of Art, a philosophy of art,[5] originally published in 1998 with a foreword by Ken Wilber was reissued in 2017.[20] The book traces the evolution of human consciousness through art history, explores the role of an artist's intention and conscience, and reflects on the creative process as a spiritual path. He promotes the mystical potential of art and argues that the process of artistic creation has an important role to play in the enlightenment of both the artist and the broader culture.[21]
In Transfigurations, published in 2001, Grey addresses his portrayals of light bodies, performance works, his collaborative relationship with Allyson Grey, and their quest to build a Chapel of Sacred Mirrors.[22]
Sounds True has released The Visionary Artist, a CD of Grey's reflections on art as a spiritual practice.
Grey co-edited the book, Zig Zag Zen: Buddhism and Psychedelics (Chronicle Books, 2002, reprinted by Synergetic Press, 2015).[23]
Alex Grey has published a 10 volume journal that features his own artistic works and the works of other visionary thinkers and philosophers.
Film
As an advocate for sacred art, Grey was the subject of the 2004 documentary ARTmind: the healing potential of sacred art.
Grey and the Chapel of Sacred Mirrors gallery in New York City were featured in the 2006 documentary CoSM The Movie, directed by Nick Krasnic.[24]
Grey appeared in the 2006 film Entheogen: Awakening the Divine Within, a documentary about rediscovering an enchanted cosmos in the modern world.[25]
He also appeared in the film DMT: The Spirit Molecule, in which he talked about the importance of the substance DMT in the past and present world, as well as describing some of his personal experiences with the substance and how it influenced his painting.[third-party source needed]
In 2008, the San Francisco Chronicle reported that Grey lived in New York City with his wife, painter Allyson Grey. They have one daughter, Zena Grey.[6] Grey is a member of the Integral Institute, formed by his friend Ken Wilber.
In the media
Grey in 2007 with one of his artworks
The Viking Youth Power Hour interviewed Alex and Allyson Grey about the role of sacred art, the holy shenanigans of Burning Man, and the development of his process.[27]
In Variable Star, a 2006 science fiction novel written by Spider Robinson based on a story outline by Robert A. Heinlein, Robinson devotes several pages to his protagonist's discovery of Grey's Sacred Mirrors and Progress of the Soul series, and to using them to enhance meditation.[28][third-party source needed]
In 2013 Grey appeared on the podcast of Joe Rogan.[29]
2012: Net of Being (Alex Grey & Allyson Grey), Inner Traditions - Bear & Company, ISBN978-1594773846
2015: Zig Zag Zen: Buddhism and Psychedelics, (Ed. Allan Badiner, Alex Grey), Synergetic Press, ISBN9780907791621
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Psychedelia usually refers to a style or aesthetic that is resembled in the psychedelic subculture of the 1960s and the psychedelic experience produced by certain psychoactive substances. This includes psychedelic art, psychedelic music and style of dress during that era. This was primarily generated by people who used psychedelic drugs such as LSD, mescaline and psilocybin and also non-users who were participants and aficionados of this subculture. Psychedelic art and music typically recreate or reflect the experience of altered consciousness. Psychedelic art uses highly distorted, surreal visuals, bright colors and full spectrums and animation to evoke, convey, or enhance the psychedelic experience. Psychedelic music uses distorted electric guitar, Indian music elements such as the sitar, tabla, electronic effects, sound effects and reverb, and elaborate studio effects, such as playing tapes backwards or panning the music from one side to another.
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