Alex Grey & Allyson Grey

December 3, 2021

Alex Grey & Allyson Grey are two of the visionary art movement’s most profound artists for the past 46 years.

“Visionary artist are people who have altered their consciousness either through meditation or through plant teacher sacrament, they may gain access to the sort of divine imagination,” said Alex Grey.

Both have been on their own journey of mystical and psychedelic awakenings over the years.

For Alex it brought upon, Sacred Mirrors, a series of 21 paintings examining the body, mind and spirit in the context of cosmic, biological and technological evolution. For Allyson a need to express chaos, order and secret writing.  

 “The secret writing is an alphabet of 20 letters. An overwhelming sense of God, of contact, came to me in 1971 after reading the book “Be Here Now” by Ram Dass. Who suggested going into a dark room and having an LSD trip solo. When I did try that with the intention of seeing the white light, I saw the secret writing. It was washing on me and on the surface and lofting through the air. It was a language that was untranslatable, I could not speak it or hear it but it was the language of creative expression,” said Allyson Grey.

Sharing an art studio and partnership since 1975 the two have worked independently and collaboratively.

 “The thing I think is our highlight of our work together is the mural. The mural is on canvas, it’s 34 feet wide and 8 feet tall and it has its own carrying tube and we’ve carried it to various festivals and events across the planet really,” said Allyson.

“It’s called Star Gazers it’s basically this idea that we are sort of all connected by the lights inside of us which are kind of in this suggestion kind of a cosmos, but we expressed them through cosmic dancers,” said Alex.

The piece that has been used to put their work forward to the public is a collaborated piece titled Rainbow Eye Ripple. 

“It’s based on a compositional strategy that Allyson has used repeatedly in her work of a square inside of a diamond inside of a square, you know ingested squares basically. Then I kind of added the eye field to it,” said Alex.

 They have meshed their styles together over the years but also continued to work on their own projects.

 “My most recent work in the show is a group of five watercolors called Gems. I labeled them 1,2,3,4,5 Gems of awareness. They are brand new works of mine just in watercolor, but they are just so near and dear to my heart,” said Allyson.

A special project for Alex has been his work with the rock band Tool.

 “I’ve been involved in the last three albums, with their album art and then my work gets into the stage shows and things like that and videos and various things,” said Alex.

Tool’s last album came out in the summer of 2019 titled Fear Inoculum. The band used Alex’s work titled The Great Turn in which the character or man in the drawing has many arms reaching up and then a flip side with the same character reaching down.

“So, there is one lurching toward the light and there is one you know kind of twisting and heading downward. It is the sense of polarization of being, I think that a lot of people have experienced that and can relate to it,” said Alex.

That isn’t the only feature Alex did for Tool, Drummer Dan Kerry, asked Alex to paint his drum set. 

 “I painted a portrait of Danny and I blew up his ear and the inter part of it and you see him listening to the rhythms of the cosmos and kind of beating out the rhythm and the rhythm becomes a blue dot and it jumps from one drum to the other,” said Alex.

All of these works are featured in their current exhibit at Mesa Contemporary Arts Museum.

 “We have been sharing a studio for 46 years and we have never had an exhibit that brings together so many works of ours. This is the biggest gallery show we’ve ever had of our works together and that’s what I think is the most exciting thing about it,” said Allyson.

 “It’s such a beautiful museum and so we feel incredibly honored to share this subject, we call it The Beyond WithIn,” said Alex.

Alex and Allyson both hope those who view their exhibit will feel a sense of being uplifted, a sense of spirit, creativity and a sense of people realizing the possibility of those things for themselves.

“I think that when people have a psychedelic experience there is the possibility that they might feel isolated unless they have a network of friends that they might have seen something strange inside their minds they might wonder if they are crazy or something like that. If they see a work of art that seems to resonate or even match some of the intense visual elements that one encounters in the psychedelic state then they see they are not alone they are not really crazy,” said Alex.

The “experience” is all part of a whole tradition of visionary pneumonia, which according to the Grey’s goes back hundreds of years in mystical literature and sacred traditions. With many people now having these experiences again, the Grey’s want to find and connect with them. They have launched COSM TV which stands for “Chapel of Scared Mirrors” a channel on YouTube which broadcast 100 programs, from full moon ceremonies to music and poetry shows to performance art documentary and podcast with Alex and Allyson on a variety of topics.

“At COSM, in the Hudson Valley, we are building a temple called Entheon. It is a temple of visionary art. It’s a 12 thousand square foot building with an elevator and different rooms of our work and other artists. We are doing a really visionary temple museum of sorts,” said Allyson.

Entheon hasn’t opened to the public yet, but Alex and Allyson have been working on opening it all through COVID. The entry gallery of Entheon will host All One Gallery and will feature rotating exhibitions of international visionary artists. Many of the artist who are on display in the current show at Mesa Contemporary Arts Museum will be exhibited in the first show at Entheon.

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