Sample Artist research

If you are having an issue or question about the artist This is a good example of what the artist research should look like.  It doesn't have to be all philosophical just put down in three paragraphs

1. Who the artist is?  (Short BIO--1 paragraph)
2. What kind of work they make? (describe it, its style, how its classified... ie. pop, minimal, etc.)
3. How does the artist use color in his work?

DON'T FORGET TO INCLUDE AN IMAGE OR TWO OR EVEN THREE!

John Doe

Design Foundations

Thomas Green

Alex Grey

Alex Grey was born November 29^th, 1953, in Columbus Ohio. Not the place you’d think a great psychedelic artist would originate. The vajrayana practitioner is associated with “the Age of Aquarius” a.k.a, New Age Movement. This was a period in which the art was based off of self-help spirituality. He is considered on of the founders of the contemporary visionary movement, and currently teaches at NYU.

            Grey’s work has a wide variety of: performance art, process art, visionary, installation, and paintings. The work I’m best familiar with is his album covers for the metal band Tool. When I was young, my mom would show me a lot of music and loved showing me the cover art as well.  I didn’t understand the heaviness of lead singer Maynard’s lyrics but it made sense with Alex Grey’s razor eyes and mandalas. His work and Tools sound complimented each other in a way gears to a clock did. Alex Grey also did the cover art of Nirvana’s in Utero and Beastie Boys’ III communication.

            I admire Alex Grey’s intricacy in his paintings. His work is so clean it looks like he made his painting in Photoshop. In Grey’s work he shows a lot of human anatomy and its interaction with his depiction of spirituality, energy and chakras. Grey always knew he was an artist to the point he dropped out of high school to pursue his dreams in New York. His anatomy drawing where so on point that he was recommended to do illustration in anatomy books as his first job. Grey considers his art as a form of meditation and attributes a lot of his work to LSD and his enlightenment. I agree with his idea of art being meditation,. Art is often used as a rehabilitation technique.

            In Alex Grey’s Overlapping of human anatomy, spirituality, and energies I find inspiration. We go in our own personal trance when we create. It is the physical form of our mind. Gray uses a great deal of vibrant color and progressive pattern, and also plays with figure/ground relationships and reversal in an always new and surprising way. I agree that finding your style of art is a form (if not the most important) of finding yourself, and in that way we can all connect with Grey’s work.