Meet Gene Grey
It is widely believed that art ignites feelings in us that weren’t previously there. However, that’s far from the truth. All it does is awaken what’s already in our subconscious, sparking a fire that helps us become who we always wanted to be. Visual art, too, is a way to express the human experience and understand the experience of those around us.
As a visual artist who portrays the same ideology in his work, Gene grey is yet to be celebrated for creating artwork as beautiful as his. Hailing from New Orleans, Grey has a strong sense of individuality. According to the bio on his social media profiles, his work does not revolve around a single theme or idea but anything his mind wanders around or considers “cool” enough.
Source: www.genegreyartwork.com
In the world of visual art, Gene Grey is like a free-spirited bird who does not restrict himself or his work to contemporary ideals. His website has several individual pieces revolving around nothing but imagery from his own head.
However, some of his best work is a reflection of the black experience in modern-day America. One of his thought-provoking pieces, “A sight for sore eyes,” shows a black kid with ropes tied around his eyes, portraying how systematic oppression persists and may soon result in the repetition of a cruel history. He believes that true equality cannot exist in a world that constantly ignores its past and present and constantly silences voices.
Through another psychedelic piece called “unplugged,” he further elaborates that the freedom we have today is nothing more than an illusion. Our minds are constantly getting polluted with the fallacies of “change” when in reality, everything is exactly how it was. The voices are still being silenced, and inequality at large is still being practiced against people of color.
Gene Grey firmly believes that when our forefathers predicted a world as unequal as ours, they weren’t wrong. In this powerful piece, Grey depicts how the black awakening is slowly but steadily progressing.
His recent collection “Famine of the mind” is a rather different take on the modern human experience. Through his collection, Gene Grey has emphasized how mental droughts are real, and people can get mentally, physically, and spiritually exhausted, but no one talks about it enough. However, there is wisdom in these moments too. They keep us grounded and honest till our moment of clarity arrives.
Through his very first collection, “Perception often validates,” Grey has tried to convey how life is all about living the hard truths and finding our self-worth.
It is through these experiences that our purpose and existence in the world are defined. He also quotes an old saying, “you produce in your experiences what you see in your mind,” to prove that the power of imagery is, in fact, the best way to reflect our feelings.
