David Grey
David Grey is an artist, designer, and boutique farmer whose work bridges graphic design, mindfulness, and the vibrational qualities of color. With a BA in Psychology from Tufts University and an MFA in Graphic Design from CalArts, David spent 15 years as a university professor, founding the Graphic Design Department at Santa Fe University of Art and Design. His international design workshops span Italy, Spain, Germany, Mexico, Brazil, India, and Kuwait.
Through his holistic practice, Artful Awareness, David approaches graphic design as a contemplative art—one that integrates mindfulness and the subtle energies of design elements. His large-format contemplative art prints are crafted to ground and uplift the spaces they inhabit.
In addition to running an independent design studio for over two decades, David has served as an art director for a sneaker company, an electronic music label, an international new media festival, and a historic New Mexico farmhouse inn. Today, he divides his time between his Santa Fe studio and farm life in Abiquiu, New Mexico.
Artist Statement
I’m inspired by light, color, rhythm, and harmony. Stillness and vibration fascinate me. I’m enamored by James Turrell’s use of light, how Mark Rothko released the essence of color, and the transcendental forms of Agnes Pelton. I love folk art, thangka paintings, and teachings on the basic space of phenomena. But my biggest source of inspiration has always been nature and music.
Color is everything to me. It’s an experience. It’s perceptual and relational. It can push and pull a space or shift your emotions. It can create a sense of harmony or dissonance. It can calm or distract the mind. It can even heal the subtle energy body. I explore color the way an electronic musician explores sound. I push it, pull it, layer it, and spend countless hours making color relationships that resonate like music. I use form in compositions to vibrate qualities of basic duality: stillness and movement, balance and tension, foreground and background, this or that.
I’ve learned over the years that beauty is not a finished state—it’s an ever-present sense of perception. My creative process is motivated by the coincidence of opposites. I make one ‘relationship of contrast,’ then another, and another. I wander through this intuitive flow until my emotions resonate with a sense of harmony, and then I listen. I listen with my heart, not my mind.
Although my artwork is crafted through a combination of analog and digital techniques, I ultimately save the work as a digital file and, like a sound engineer, change one relationship in a subtle or significant way, continuing the process. I remix my own work over and over again. This can go on for hours or days, allowing for dozens, if not hundreds, of iterations to arise. Treating the artwork like a song transforms the creative process into a blissful, transcendent dance.
www.dgrey.com/contemplative-art
