Alex Grey is a visionary artist, art instructor, and author. His paintings, sculpture, and performances are based on his lifelong interest in the themes of death and transcendence. He studied at the Columbus College of Art and Design in Ohio and the Boston Museum School. During this period he had a series of drug-induced mystical experiences that transformed his agnostic existentialism to a radical transcendentalism.
Grey spent five years at Harvard Medical School working in the anatomy department, studying the body and preparing cadavers for dissection. He also worked at Harvard's department of mind/body medicine with Dr. Herbert Benson and Dr. Joan Borysenko, conducting scientific experiments to investigate subtle healing energies.
Grey exhibits his work worldwide and is often a speaker at international conferences. A mid-career retrospective of Grey's work was held at the Museum of Contemporary Art of San Diego in 1999. The Chapel of Sacred Mirrors in New York City, a long-term exhibition of fifty works of Grey’s transformative art, opened in 2004. Among his publications are the monograph Sacred Mirrors: The Visionary Art of Alex Grey, which has been translated into five languages, and The Mission of Art, and Transfigurations.
