Visionary art aims to transcend the boundaries of the physical realm to portray a wider view of awareness through mystical and spiritual themes. Visionary artist Allyson Grey is a conceptual abstract painter whose work is inspired by these themes, and believes parallels between contemporary visionary art and ancient art can be found everywhere.
Allyson Grey has spent decades exploring her work as a visionary artist, which stems from a life changing LSD trip where she first experienced “secret writing.” Along with her husband and fellow visionary artist Alex Grey, she co-founded the Chapel of Sacred Mirrors (CoSM), a transdenominational church and nonprofit organization based in New York state.
High Times Magazine, November 2023
From Past to Present
Ancient art infuses psychedelic, primordial elements that trickle into the framework of contemporary art, including Allyson Grey’s work, which incorporates elements of sacred geometry, symbols, illuminated manuscripts, and what she calls “secret writing.”
Allyson Grey’s recurring motifs include images of the realms of heaven and hell, abstract visions and portrayals of inner realms, cosmograms and mandalas, and sacred geometry, which she describes as “visions of worlds inside of worlds and charts of the cosmos.”
One example of ancient art with these themes can be seen in the Tassili cave painting (c. 7,000–5,000 B.C.E.). The painting was found in a Neolithic site in modern-day Algeria and depicts an animal-human hybrid with a feathered headdress (or possibly horns or antennae) sprouting mushrooms and holding more mushrooms with a hive-like patterned surface. Allyson Grey describes this noteworthy piece as “an animal-human hybrid in contact with a mystic symbol when in contact with a psychedelic fungi.”
Visionary art also progressed through the Middle Ages, particularly with female mystics such as Hildegard of Bingen, who created the “Universal Man” illustration (c. 1165 C.E.), which is cosmic …
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Author: Benjamin M. Adams / High Times
