1. Your work is interwoven with themes of death and transcendence. What inspires you to explore these themes?
Reflection on life has to consider our mortality. Buddha called death one of the greatest teachers because it helps us focus on the preciousness of the moment and our opportunity to be alive. Mortality became an interest early in my life. Some of my earliest drawings reflect that subject. The Russian Cosmists were a 19th century spiritual movement whose chief objective was physical immortality. They believed that death was a problem that could be solved. So far, however, aging and death follows in succession. The wisdom of nature has so ordained it.
2. You spent five years at Harvard Medical School working in the Anatomy department. You also worked at the Department of Behavioral Medicine with Dr. Herbert Benson and Dr. Joan Borysenko conducting experiments to investigate subtle healing energy. What impact on your career did this experience have in your life?
I learned how to run experiments, collect data and how it feels briefly to be a scientist. My subject has always been the nature of consciousness so working with professionals in mind/body medicine, I examined the problem of making the mind visible, creating a visual continuum between physical and invisible realities. Working in the morgue at Harvard Medical School I studied the container of consciousness and contemplated the nature of death. While working in the department of Anatomy preparing exhibits on the history of pathology, I examined the subject of disease and anomaly, meditating on the mysterious and often surprising corruption of the body. Not only did I have access to one of the best medical school libraries in the world where I studied consciousness and psychedelics thoroughly.
3. Your paintings portray an x-ray conception of the multiple layers of physical and non-physical reality, depicting the interaction of anatomical and spiritual forces. After the creation of Sacred Mirrors you applied this multidimensional perspective to archetypal human experiences in paintings such as Praying, Theologue (meditating), Kissing, Copulating, Pregnancy, Birth, Nursing and Dying.
Yes. That is true. Check alexgrey.com for pictures and information about my paintings.
4. Your paintings fascinate me, because they are imbued with an intense and subtle light that is rare in the history of art. The figures of your painting are very majestic …
Thank you. It is an honor that you feel a resonance with my art.
5. Can you tell us about the mystical experience that transformed you and your art into the spiritual realm?
On May 30th, 1975, I took my first dose of LSD. After arriving at a party and sharing the drug with the hostess, I sat on her couch and closed my eyes. Inside my head, I was spiraling through a pearlescent tunnel from utter darkness toward a brilliant light. My ignorance was the darkness, God was the light. The polar opposites blended together seamlessly and it was then that I decided to change my name to Grey. My mission as an artist was now clear: to reveal and unite polarities, male with female, flesh with spirit. This propelled my search for the One love and light at the heart of all mystical traditions.
Nihilist to Mystic
Excerpt from Net of Being, by Alex Grey, Inner Traditions Publishing, 2012
On June 3, 1979, Allyson and I simultaneously shared the same psychedelic vision; an experience of the “Universal Mind Lattice.” Or shared consciousness, no longer identified with or limited by our physical bodies, was moving at tremendous speed through an inner universe of fantastic chains of imagery, infinitely multiplying in parallel mirrors. At a super-orgasmic pitch of speed and bliss, we became individual fountains and drains of light, interlocked with an infinite omnidirectional network of fountains and drains composed of and circulating a brilliant iridescent love energy. We were the Light, and the Light was God.
Excerpt from Transfiguration by Alex Grey, Inner Traditions Publishing, 2001
http://alexgrey.com/art/paintings/soul/the-kiss/
http://alexgrey.com/art/paintings/soul/ocean-of-love-bliss/
6. What can I wish for unusually spiritually developed artist?
For spiritually developed artists, I wish for them enlightenment and for their continued creation of great and uplifting works.
7. When you are planning an exhibition in Europe?
For the past year there has been an exhibition of major works at La Halle Saint Pierre: Musée d’Art Brut in Paris. Allyson and I will be teaching this coming February at the Vienna Academy of Visionary Art in Austria. Come meet us and bring images of your best work to share and learn with us. We also warmly invite you to visit CoSM, Chapel of Sacred Mirrors in the beautiful Hudson Valley of New York. We are building sacred space for all to share and welcome all spiritually inclined visionaries.
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