GREY MATTER
We get inside the head of renowned artist and longtime Tool collaborator Alex Grey
When did you start to discover your own style?
Alex Grey: “In high school when I was 17 years old and found Michelangelo, Dali and Tchelitchew, they opened some kind of doorway to the visionary worlds for me. When I got to the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, my roommate, richard Moss, introduced me to the work of [German artist]
Mati Klarwein, one of the greatest psychedelic visionary painters, beloved by Miles Davis, Santana, Warhol and
Jimi hendrix. That opened me up to the world of the Viennese Fantastic realists like ernst Fuchs and then
I found h.r. Giger’s [1977 book] Necronomicon. So by the age of 21, in 1975, I was making visionary paintings based on psychedelic experiences.”
How did your time at Harvard Medical school inform your work?
“I photographed some remarkable teratological [abnormally physically developed] specimens in the anatomical museum there and spent some time in the basement in a morgue, literally the underworld, preparing bodies for anatomy class. It imbued a profound respect around the subject of mortality and a lifelong fascination with the beauty and sacredness of the body at every level of cell, organ, fibre, and sinew. how consciousness resides in each of our bodies is a profound mystery, as is the passing away of that connection with the body. Buddha said the greatest teacher is Death. Death should shake us into realising the precious temporariness of our time on earth.”
When did you first try psychedelics, what was it like, and how did it impact your art?
“I was a 21-year-old, deeply depressed atheist performance artist. Waking up in the morning on the last day of art
school, I dared God to show me a reason not to kill myself. later that afternoon I was saying goodbye to my art professor, and a classmate, Allyson, drove by and invited us to her end-of-the-year art school party happening that night. on Allyson’s couch, I had my first lSD journey on May 30, 1975. Behind closed eyes, I was spiralling through an inner tunnel of awareness, a ‘rebirth canal’. I was in the dark, going toward the light. The light was infinite love and divine wisdom, it felt like God was revealed through a visionary symbol. The Polar Unity Spiral [Alex’s name for this curling space going from black to white] showed me that the opposites were connected by all the shades of grey.
Grey brought the opposites together, and that was what I wanted to do with my art. So, I decided to change my name. Allyson knew the experience of God contact. We fell in love and have been together ever since that night.”
Why do you think the flaming eye is so important to Tool fans?
“It is a symbol developed in my work since the 1980s as a symbol of heightened consciousness. In the Lateralus album, I used the flaming eye at the creative power centres of the hand, heart, throat and third eye of the singing anatomical figure. Adam seemed to recognise the logo-like quality and utility of the symbol.
Soon enough, fans sent pictures of some amazing flaming eye tattoos on every part of the body.”
What’s the most challenging commission that you’ve done?
“The Net of Being was a painting based on an ayahuasca vision in 2002. I had been working on it for years when Adam saw it and wanted to use it for 10,000 Days. This painting was not a commission, but it was probably my most challenging vision to realise.”
What’s the latest news on your art space, the chapel of sacred Mirrors?
“Chapel of Sacred Mirrors, CoSM, was co-founded with my beloved artist wife, Allyson. CoSM became a non-profit in 1996 and an Art Church in 2008, a place for community to explore creativity as a spiritual practice. CoSM is now building entheon, a 12,000-square-foot, threestorey Sanctuary of Visionary Art. Inside entheon there will be a Tool Shrine.”