In 1976 during an LSD trip with my husband, Alex, I experienced my body turning into infinite strands of light that were both a fountain and a drain. As I lay meditating next to Alex, I could see that he too had been revealed as a fountain and drain, individual and distinct but connected to my "energy unit". I realized that all beings and things were "blowing off" and "sucking in" pure energy in an infinite field of confluent effluences. The energy was love, the unifying force. This changed both of our artwork as we felt that we had witnessed to the most important thing: a revelation of the grid upon which the fabric of our material reality is draped. Sometime thereafter, I read a quote describing the Jewel Net of Indra. In the abode of Indra, the Hindu God of Space, there is a net that stretches infinitely in all directions. At every intersection of the net there is a jewel so highly polished and perfect that it reflects every other jewel in the net. This description related powerfully to the revelation that we had received while in our altered state. It has been my continuing intention to point to this experience in my artwork. Intending to create spiritual art, I feel naturally attracted to abstraction and to a written sacred language. Every known religion reveres its holy writing. Sacred writing of all faiths, however, come into conflict through human interpretation as the written word defines the differences of philosophy and traditions, when truely the basis of all religion is unity and infinite love. In 1975 I began writing automatically in an invented or transmitted language. I do not give meaning to the symbols in my art as it is meaning that separates experience from expression. The alphabet that I use points to the notion of a sacred language beyond meaning. Some of the works call to mind the experience of seeing an illuminated text in a foreign language and religion. In recent work, I combine the icons of perfection (the Jewel Net) with the secret language, and images of chaos. Chaos in my art is the entropy of the units of spectrally arranged squares using a system of "planned randomness", allowing every spectral unit to fall apart in a variety of ways -- squares falling off of a corner or the spectral unit exploding from the center, etc. The three elements used in my work, Chaos, Order and Secret Writing, are non-literal representations of the sacred. Born in 1952, I have been married to Alex Grey for 25 years. We met at the Boston Museum School where I received a Bachelors and a Masters Degree in Fine Arts. I've had one person shows at Stux Gallery and O.K. Harris Gallery in NYC, among others. Commissions of permanent public works include a 24 foot mural at the First Bank of Lowell, Massachusetts and my paintings have been collected by many corporations and individuals. I paint and collaborate with my very busy husband and adorable (and also very busy) actress daughter, Zena Lotus, in Brooklyn, New York.

• published: 02 May 2014
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