ABOUT THE PROGRAM
The expressive language of painting has uniquely traced the human soul’s evolution of consciousness for over 30,000 years. Sacred art traditions throughout the ages have celebrated the visionary realms, exploring Heaven Hell and the multiverse inbetween. Each individual artist continues the evolving wave of visual culture. Today, the internet provides access to the entire history of the human imagination through the iconography of past civilizations. Geometric and organic pattern and ornament, spectral color, light and shadow, texture, focus, symbolism and naturalism offer abundant creative means for the interpreter and illuminator of mystical and transcendental domains. Skilled painters, intimate with expanded states of awareness, translate these subtle archetypal dimensions to facilitate the realization of divine spirit.
This workshop will explore the importance of intention, process, subject matter, and the historic context of visionary painting in an open studio environment that supports independent thinking and artistic maturity. Building on existing painting skills, the Greys will support participants in celebrating their uniqueness, developing personal themes. Both conceptual and technical skills will be addressed in pursuit of defining and communicating the artist's intention.
WHAT TO EXPECT
PORTFOLIO REVIEW
The 2025 CoSM 7-Day Visionary Painting Intensive with Alex Grey & Allyson Grey offers an immersive program for serious painters at intermediate to advanced levels of experience.
An application with samples of your work will be required for the selection process of participants in the Visionary Painting Intensive.
This application requests each candidate to include three examples of their best paintings.
The application for the Visionary Painting Intensive requests access to the artist's social media and contact information, as well as a brief artist statement honed to a few sentences.
Because an artist statement is useful to serious artists, your statement will be part of this workshop. For a good guide on writing an artist statement, read this Article Posted by the School of the Art Institute of Chicago …or any number of guides posted on the internet.
PAINTING INTENSIVE
During this seven-day Master Class, participants will work on two paintings, with an intention to make substantial progress on both works. One painting will be a self-portrait (in the widest definition) and the second work will be an original painting in line with the development of your personal style and concept.
Class members should come to the workshop prepared with at least one (or more) concept sketch(es).
Techniques, elements of design and composition, color study and the development of expressive content will be discussed daily. In-depth conversations about the work of each participant will be part of the schedule and flow. Offered also will be talks on The History of Visionary Art, daily silent painting meditations accompanied by inspiring music, presentations by class members, conversations concerning the life of an artist and open discussion of the work of every person in the class, providing valuable insights for all participants. Guided vision practices will catalyze and crystalize an image to be realized as a painting. Oil paint, acrylic paint, and watercolors on a 2-dimensional surface are welcome mediums for this class.
YOUR INSTRUCTORS
Alex Grey & Allyson Grey
Alex Grey, world-renowned artist, poet, and author, is best loved for his paintings which portray multiple dimensions of reality, interweaving biological anatomy with psychic and spiritual energies. His books, Sacred Mirrors, The Mission of Art, Transfigurations, and Art Psalms, trace the development of his work and mystical experiences that shaped his spiritual artistic life. Alex’s most recent monograph, Net of Being, addresses how his art is evolving the cultural body through icons of interconnectedness. alexgrey.com
Allyson Grey is an artist whose paintings have been exhibited and sold internationally. Co-founder of the Chapel of Sacred Mirrors, Grey is a community leader with a Master of Fine Arts degree from Tufts University. She has edited and co-authored over a dozen books and journals, lectured widely, and has been an educator and muse to artists for over 30 years. The symbol system in her paintings represent an essentialized world-view comprised of chaos, order and secret writing. Allyson is the wife and partner of internationally renowned artist, Alex Grey, and the mother of accomplished film actress, Zena Grey. allysongrey.com
Together, the Grey’s co-founded the Chapel of Sacred Mirrors, CoSM, a spiritual creative retreat center in the Hudson Valley of New York. On the forefront of a movement in which painters join musicians on stage, the Grey’s painted together live before tens of thousands of folks at New York Broadway theaters, at sold-out festivals and arenas in dozens of international cities across five continents. As long-time advocates of “cognitive liberty,” a growing international “sacramental culture” has embraced the Grey’s as important mapmakers and spokespersons for the visionary realm. The Grey’s, with a dedicated and evolving team, have created CoSM, an interspiritual Art Church and Entheon, a Visionary Art sanctuary at CoSM. cosm.org
CoSM WORKSHOP SETTING
Class sessions will take place in the newly renovated MAGI Art Lab.
Grey House, CoSM's Visionary Victorian guest house, provides accommodations for all participants.
Residing onsite together is a part of this immersively creative week, providing maximum interactivity, immersion & enrichment.
Accommodations in Grey House are offered in a variety of economies and are additional to the workshop fee.
ACCOMMODATIONS
There are ten guest rooms available in Grey House, CoSM’s Visionary Victorian guest facility.
Private rooms with private or shared bathrooms, Queen or King beds.
Shared dorm style rooms with single or queen beds — femme only and coed dorm options available.
The guest house features works of art by Alex Grey and Allyson and accomplished artists of the international Visionary Art community.
You may also like the following events from COSM Chapel of Sacred Mirrors:
Also check out other
Arts events in Wappingers Falls,
Fine Arts events in Wappingers Falls,
Workshops in Wappingers Falls.
