DaVinci on Drugs

What would Leonardo DaVinci’s art look like if he did drugs? Exploring the visionary art by Alex Grey at alexgrey.com may just provide an example of what that might look like. The site features Grey’s works ranging from early drawings and self-portraits to his more recent psychedelic and visionary style paintings. Under the paintings tab, viewers are free to explore several of Grey’s series including his early works, progress of the soul, and his most recent project titled “The Chapel of Sacred Mirrors.” The paintings in the progress of the soul section combine aspects of the physical world with symbolic representations of the spiritual and metaphysical worlds clearly influenced by a strong dose of LSD. Human bodies are portrayed in a strange style centered heavily around interior anatomy and feature skeletal structures and elements of the circulatory and nervous systems much like the scientific works of Leonardo DaVinci. Multiple levels of the spiritual chakra including the third-eye and the aura are also explored and represented through vivid coloring and mystical lines surrounding the beings. The backgrounds and settings of the paintings are also brightly colored and are based on complex geometric patterning. This series of Grey’s work includes several different events in the journey of human life including pregnancy, birth, nursing, copulating, healing, and death and are all painted using this same combination of the physical and the spiritual. The Chapel of Sacred Mirrors features all of the human physical and spiritual systems as well, but in this section there is a separate painting devoted to each of them. Grey’s physical and spiritual vision and understanding are astounding and the deep detail and symbolism that he has been able to incorporate into his art can easily keep a viewer engaged for hours.