My Artistic Influence and Inspiration (for Cassandra)

 Alex Grey: Visonary Art

Alex Grey is a visionary artist from New York, Hudson Valley, and throughout his life he has experimented in various art forms. Although he is primarily a painter he also does a variety of performance artworks. One In particular was described my himself as his own personal 'shock therapy' 

The piece was titled 'Brain-sack', and it featured a human brain (from which he obtained through the morg where he worked at Harvard Universcity). During this time he also shaved half of his hair for half the year and had to spend half of his money, as another performance (lol) but he kept the hair, he eate a can of spagetti, he then drank a concoction which would make him gegurjatate the spagetti, onto the brain, then covered it in his hair, put it all in a sack and that was 'Brain-sack!' 

Alex (like myself) wanted to study, and capture the evolution of consciousness on canvas. And where else to begin than with the box that consciousness comes in, the human body, thee Anatomy. So naturally, he got a job in a morg preparing bodies for dissection, and while constantly taking notes and sketches of the inner mechanicals of the human body. He was fascinated! With how our physical bodies exist, and how they perform. 

During this time he was invited to an arty party by a fellow art school student, little would he know that that night will change his life forever. The host of the party gave Alex a tab of LSD. He had never tried this remarkable drug before and thought it would be fun. When it kicked in, he transcended time and space, and found himself in blackness, almost looking down a tunnel. There was a light at the end and as he focused more and more he saw this spiral the twisted it's was toward him, it was at this moment in seeing 'divine light' that he saw the shade grey, brings the two opposets together, and thus later he changed his name to Grey. But that was not the only miraculous event that occurred that night. The host of the party who was also high on a acid, he become very friendly with Alex and from that day forward they have been bonded by love and a shared passion for art and the consciousness we have the potential to access. Allyson and Alex are now happily married and continue to work with each other on their current projects. 

He then made the transaction from drawn systematic, and calculated depictions of the human form, (with a little help from the revolutionary, visionary drug, LSD) to a great body work now known as 'The Sacred Mirrors'. Which are being exhibited in New York, at his own 'Chapel of Sacred Mirrors' from which he has built up a large community of followers, and has united thousands of like-minded people through visionary sacred art. But this series of works depict three aspects to man, the body, the mind, and the soul. In 21 life-sized paintings, Alex stars by depicting the material work, a silhouette of a man standing, with all the negative space filled in the the elements of the periodic table, the next six paintings are of the entire anatomical body, starting from the skeletal system, to the intricate nervous systems, cardiovascular system, the organs, in both male and pregnant woman, and all of the muscle systems as well. He also deals with the concept of race, painting many men and women if different ethnic backgrounds, and drawing the conclusion that we are all the same underneath, we are all part of the great body of life, and the magic of reality. 

The later half of this work, is where it get very interesting/exciting for me! He actually paints the Psycic mind, with all elements of the physical body, he shows the beauty of the inner mind and all of the colours and spectrums of light that can be seen in altered states of consciousness. He moves through this avenue of the mind and comes out emerging in awe-inspiring figures of archetypal images of great spiritual leaders from across the world. From Jesus, to the Dalia Lama, the collective unconscious, and many more amazing themes. 

I first came across Alex's art while browsing the local music shop. Shuffling through inanimate album covers, and then I stumbled upon 'Lateralus' by the and Tool. It stuck out at me, as it is a muilti layer with perspect plastic with a deeply coloured spiral in the background, and the silhouette of the human body. Then layers of skeletal, organs system, and various key ideas, from the 'Sacred Mirrors' series I talked about earlier. Are all in here, with the added flaming spiritual eye, as seen in many of Alex's works. 

It just caught my eye! It was something very new and fresh to me. I had never seen an album cover with this as much depth and diversity. Likewise the music followed suit, with many many great musical compositions, odd time signatures, and the most connecting lyrics, that I can relate to in the most inate sense. The whole package sparked a fire within me! I all of a sudden was fanciated about these works of art, and Tool as a band, I found they are one of the most revolutionary and experimental bands of the past two decades! 

Grey also did artwork for Tools latest release '10,000 Days', in this album cover Alex steps it up a gear! He chooses to depict the climax of the transpersonal universal realm, in it's infinite state of the collective subconscious. The painting itself it titled 'The Net of Being' and depicts a very detailed interwoven world of galaxies and universes, as part of an intricate webbing of spiritual god heads, each pillar has four faces with flaming eyes, that have 360degrees of everything and everyone that ever was and that ever will be. A huge project the painting is 180 by 90 inches! And the music Tool has companied the art with is of equal gigantic proportions! 

Anyway, Alex has been a carylist for my own artistic, spiritual, journey and has generally awakening me to the possibilities of the universe that we are a part of. My goal as an artist is to draw from my own subconscious and explore the transpersonal realm beyond AND within thus crazy thing we call life.