Alex Grey was born in Columbus, Ohio on November 29, 1953, the middle child of a gentle middle-class couple. His father was a graphic designer and encouraged his son’s drawing ability. Young Alex would collect insects and dead animals from the suburban neighborhood and bury them in the back yard. The themes of death and transcendence weave throughout his artworks, from the earliest drawings to later performances, paintings and sculpture.
Alex went to the Columbus College of Art and Design on a full scholarship from 1971-1973. Grey dropped out of art school and painted billboards for Columbus Outdoor Advertising, 1973-1974. Grey then moved to Boston to study with and work as a studio assistant for conceptual artist, Jay Jaroslav, at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston in 1974-1975.
At the Museum School, Alex met his life-long partner, the artist, Allyson Rymland Grey. At their meeting in 1975, an entheogenically induced mystical experience transformed his agnostic existentialism to a radical transcendentalism. The Grey couple continued to take "sacramental journeys" on LSD. For five years, Alex worked in the Anatomy department at Harvard Medical School preparing cadavers for dissection while he studied the body on his own. He later worked for Dr. Herbert Benson and Dr. Joan Borysenko as a research technologist at Harvard’s department of Mind/Body Medicine, conducting scientific experiments to investigate subtle healing energies. Alex’s anatomical training prepared him for painting the Sacred Mirrors (see below) and for working as a medical illustrator. Doctors at Harvard saw images of his Sacred Mirrors, and hired Alex for illustration work.
Grey instructed Artistic Anatomy and Figure Sculpture for ten years at New York University, and has taught the Visionary Art Intensive and other art workshops with Allyson at The New York Open Center, Naropa Institute in Boulder, Colorado, the California Institute of Integral Studies and Omega Institute in Rhinebeck, New York. The couple now teaches MAGI workshops (Mystic Artists Guild International) at CoSM in Wappinger, New York.
In 1972 Grey began a series of art actions that bear resemblance to rites of passage, in that they present stages of a developing psyche. The approximately fifty performance rites, conducted over the last thirty years move through transformations from an egocentric to more sociocentric and increasingly worldcentric and theocentric identity. In a major performance entitled WorldSpirit, spoken word poetry in musical collaboration with Kenji Williams was released in 2004 as a DVD.
Grey’s unique series of 21 life-sized paintings, the Sacred Mirrors, take the viewer on a journey toward their own divine nature by examining, in detail, the body, mind, and spirit. The Sacred Mirrors, present the physical and subtle anatomy of an individual in the context of cosmic, biological and technological evolution. Begun in 1979, the series took a period of ten years to complete. It was during this period that Alex developed depictions of the human body that “x-ray” the multiple layers of reality, and reveal the interplay of anatomical and spiritual forces. After painting the Sacred Mirrors, he applied this multidimensional perspective to such archetypal human experiences as praying, meditation, kissing, copulating, pregnancy, birth, nursing and dying. Grey’s recent work explores the subject of consciousness from the perspective of “universal beings” whose bodies are grids of fire, eyes and infinite galactic swirls.
Renowned healers Olga Worral and Rosalyn Bruyere express appreciation for the skillful portrayal of clairvoyant vision his paintings of translucent glowing bodies. Countless teachers and spiritual leaders, including Deepak Choprah, incorporate Alex's art in their power point presentations. Grey’s paintings have been featured in venues as diverse as the album art of Tool, SCI, the Beastie Boys and Nirvana, Time and Newsweek magazines, the Discovery Channel, rave flyers and sheets of blotter acid. Exhibited worldwide, Alex's art has been honored with solo exhibitions at Feature Inc., Tibet House, Stux Gallery, P.S. 1, The NYC Outsider Art Fair, The New Museum in NYC, the Grand Palais in Paris, the Sao Paulo Biennial in Brazil. Alex's art has been featured in several year long exhibitions at the American Visionary Art Museum including a room installation he created with Allyson entitled "Heart Net" (1998-99). A mid-career retrospective of Grey’s works at the Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego in 1999. A keynote speaker at conferences all over the world including Tokyo, Amsterdam, Basel, Barcelona and Manaus, the international psychedelic community has embraced Grey as an important mapmaker and spokesman for the visionary realm.
Grey's first monograph, the large format art book entitled Sacred Mirrors: The Visionary Art of Alex Grey, has been translated into five languages with well over one hundred thousand copies. His inspirational book, The Mission of Art, traces the evolution of human consciousness through art history, exploring the role of an artist’s intention and conscience, and reflecting on the creative process as a spiritual path.
Transfigurations, Alex’s second monograph, contains over 300 color and black & white plates of his artwork. The Visionary Artist, a CD of Grey’s reflections published by Sounds True, leads the listener on a journey of art as a spiritual practice. The video, ARTmind incorporates Alex's images in an exploration of the healing potential of Sacred Art. Grey co-edited the book, Zig Zag Zen: Buddhism and Psychedelics (Chronicle Books, 2002). In 2004, the VISIONS boxed set contains both earlier monographs of Grey's artwork plus a portfolio of new works.
Alex Grey’s last monograph, Net of Being, shows how Alex's visionary art is evolving the cultural body through icons of interconnectedness. Grey's latest monograph includes over 200 reproductions of Grey’s artwork, contains spectacular photos of Grey’s collaboration with the band Tool plus his worldwide live-painting performances, and offers Grey’s reflections on how art evolves consciousness with a new symbology of the "networked self." Alex's painting "Net of Being" - inspired by a blazing vision of an infinite grid of Godheads during an ayahuasca journey - has reached millions as the stage set and the cover and interior of the band Tool’s Grammy award-winning triple-platinum album, 10,000 Days. Net of Being is one of many images Grey has created that have resulted in a chain reaction of uses - from apparel and jewelry to tattoos and music videos - embedding these iconic works into our culture’s living Net of Being.
Alex and Allyson have collaborated on performance art, live-painting on stage throughout the world, and the “social sculpture” called CoSM, Chapel of Sacred Mirrors, that the Grey's cofounded in 1996.
A five-year installation of Grey's best-loved artworks were exhibited at the Chapel of Sacred Mirrors, CoSM, in New York City from 2004-2009. The Chapel moved to its permanent home in Wappinger Falls, New York in February 2009. With a diverse following ranging from rockstars to scientists, Grey’s works have become icons of the contemporary spiritual movement by virtue of their power to inspire, inform, and illuminate the inexplicable.
Alex Grey has for more than 35 years been at the forefront of the visionary art field. For 2011 and 2012, the Watkins Review named Alex Grey one of the top twenty spiritual leaders alive today. The Temple of Understanding awarded and sighted both the Grey's as two of the world's top fifty Interfaith leaders.
(The book explores how the mystical experience expressed i...)
2012(More than ever, people are in pursuit of greater fulfillm...)
2002(This unique series of paintings takes the viewer on a gra...)
1990In 2004, Alex Grey and his wife founded the Chapel of Sacred Mirrors in New York, a trans-denominational church and organization dedicated to the realization of a shared 1985 vision of Alex and Allyson Grey to build a contemporary public Chapel as "a sanctuary for spiritual renewal through contemplation of transformative art."
Asked about religion, Alex said "Love is God's secret name. I grew up Methodist and went to church until my parents gave up on religion when I was nine. Allyson grew up Jewish and continues to practice to some degree. I have been a scholar of all religions, particularly Buddhism, for the past 25 years. We meditate. We are both approved ministers who counsel people regarding their spiritual and creative lives, officiate weddings, baby blessings, and attend to those grieving. Art is our spiritual path and ministry. Religion comes from the word "re" or again and "ligare" meaning to bind or tie back. The purpose of religion is to unite the self with God or the creative force. Music, sacred spaces, and meaningful icons are the way we conjoin our minds with the transcendental."
Grey's paintings can be described as 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. 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". 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. His work incorporates many religious symbols, including auras, chakras, and icons with geometric shapes and tessellations in natural, industrial, and multicultural situations. Grey's paintings are permeated with an intense and subtle light that is rare in art history. His highly detailed paintings are spiritual and scientific in equal measure, revealing his psychedelic, spiritual and supernatural view of the human species.
Alex Grey promotes the possibility of the mystical potential of art: he argues that the process of artistic creation can (and should) play a role in the enlightenment of the artist. For him, the process of artistic creation holds the potential of transcending the limitations of the mind and more fully expressing the divine spirit. He also believes that art can induce within the viewer an elevated state wherein spiritual states of being are attained.
Quotations:
"Witness the contents of mind, the visions, and sounds, the thoughts, as clouds passing through the vast expanse - the sky-like nature of mind. The rootedness of Being is in emptiness, clarity, and awareness: unborn, unspoilt, stainlessly pure."
"The infinite vibratory levels, the dimensions of interconnectedness are without end. There is nothing independent. All beings and things are residents in your awareness."
"Create perfection wherever you go with your awareness. That is why this teaching is admired by artists - they sense the correctness of the response to life as creative. Life is infinite creative play. Enjoyment and participation in this creative play is the artists profound joy. We co-author every moment with universal creativity."
"I am an intersecting kaleidoscope of Being in a rainbow refractive wave pattern: a corpuscle of light on the ocean...the transparency of my body with the rocks...sometimes the only way to summarize my feelings is to draw - to collapse the frenzy in my limbs enough to make a mark out of profound appreciation for my existence."
“Having everyone together in one place is like a creative battery that calls in the angels.”
Grey is a member of the board of advisors for the Center for Cognitive Liberty and Ethics.
Alex Grey and his wife are known to take LSD.
Quotes from others about the person
"Mr. Grey's paintings, as detailed and anatomically accurate as medical illustrations, present man as an archetypal being struggling toward cosmic unity - Grey's vision of flawed but perfectible mankind stands as an antidote to the cynicism and spiritual malaise prevalent in much contemporary art." - New York Times
Alex is married to Allyson Rymland Grey, also an artist. The Greys are grateful and proud parents of their daughter, Zena Grey, born in 1988, who is an accomplished actress and artist living in Los Angeles.
Allyson Grey is a painter and social sculptor.
Zena Grey is an actress and artist.
In 1999, Alex's work caught the attention of Tool guitarist Adam Jones. After meeting at one of Alex's art exhibitions, the two "struck up a friendship," which eventually led them to collaborate on the iconic artwork for Tool's Lateralus, 10,000 Days and more.
Maynard Keenan is an American singer-songwriter and the vocalist for the rock bands Tool, A Perfect Circle, and Puscifer.
Daniel Edwin Carey is an American drummer and instrumentalist best known for his work in American Grammy Award-winning progressive metal band Tool.
