Few if any will need an introduction to the visionary artwork of Alex Grey. Alex is widely held as the head of the visionary art movement, and his work is recognized across many organizations and religions. I have always felt that a large majority of Alex's work was fractal in nature, and if not specifically fractal, he uses "sacred" geometry routinely, along with several other personal styles, makes his work immediately recognizable. The large and varied body of work has a huge following and Alex acts as teacher, guru and philosopher at many festivals, events and happenings. Alex and his wife Allyson, are involved in many venues, but one they have done for many years is teach a visionary art class at the Omega institute in New York. Some time ago (I think early 2000's) I took the class and the resultant body of work (drawings) can be found in my current work gallery, listed under Alex Grey Class. If interested click on the "About" button to see what I did at the Grey's class.

Here is a paragraph about Alex taken from his own web site and may describe some of his talent best

Alex Grey is best known for his paintings which portray multiple dimensions of reality, interweaving biological anatomy with psychic and spiritual energies. Grey's visual meditation on the nature of life and consciousness, the subject of his art, is contained in five books. His two monographs, Sacred Mirrors and Transfigurations, follow the history of Grey's artistic life. The Mission of Art and Art Psalms reflect on art as a spiritual practice. The book, CoSM, co-authored with Allyson Grey, provides a guided tour of the New York City installation of the Sacred Mirrors collection. Grey's world-renowned career includes exhibitions and keynote addresses from Basel to Tokyo to Sao Paulo, and features on the Discovery Channel, the CBC, in Newsweek and Time Magazines. Grey's art has been used on albums for the multi-platinum bands Nirvana, Beastie Boys, Tool, and String Cheese Incident.

Knowing that Alex's work was highly mathematical always led me to believe that I will one day, when the right fractal made itself known to me, do an Alex Grey inspired work, but utilizing the fractal instead of Alex's detailed and amazing geometry. That fractal, and others, appeared to me about a month ago and I started working on what has become the image above, "Fractal Chapel (Of the Mind)" Homage to Alex Grey. Fractal Chapel is a very appropriate name for a work dedicated to Alex as one of his main drives has always been to provide an extraodinary location for his early series of paintings named "Chapel of the Sacred Mirrors". The three fractals used to compose the painting can be seen below in their raw form.

The first flame fractal that I made was the background circular image. In this I immediately drew references to Alex's work and started naming the variations AlexGrey1, 2 etc.

About a week later I happened upon the brain image and the basic concept of the painting was born. I knew the two fractals together would have a similar look to one of Alex's famous paintings, "Transfigurations". A third flame, which actually was an accident, was found usung a new version of JWildfire which had a bug, the bug changed a flame dramatically but the result to me looked perfect for the optical nerve system and eye tendons, so the last fractal element was born.

One of the most interesting parts of the picture is that the fractal forms that are aligned to the concentric circles consist of shapes reminiscent of angel wings. I call the rings of these shapes the Seraphim. the angels which are both helping form and radiate the thoughts created in this mind. A close look at the wings of the seraphim will reveal that those wings are made of even smaller seraphim, which again are made of again even smaller seraphim, fractal, holographic and mystical. Perfect ingrediants to an Homage to Alex Grey.

Also evident in the wings which make wings which make the wings of the next larger seraphim, is the design of two interfering circlets that form the shape of an eye. It would have been easy to fashion an eye in all these angels, but it would have done two things, distracted the viewer from the fact that they are in fact angels, and, make the fractal too similar to eye works of Alex.

Fractal Chapel (of the Mind) Homage to Alex Grey, is not just an homage to Alex, but even with its diverse and complimentary design to Mr Greys, continues to explain with fractals, the patterns and elements of thought, here depicted as angels, that we as humans create. This painting is both new and evolutionary, and again all the same. I thank Alex Grey for his work and inspiration, that has moved so many in the visionary school of art and beyond.