An Artist’s Guide to Psychedelic Mushrooms

There is an enduring association with creative experiment and psychedelic experiences. Recently, psychedelics have become more mainstream, explored not just for their far-out spiritual associations but as medicine, as therapy, and even just to make you more productive. How should we think about psychedelics and how they relate to art and art-making now?

Ryan McGinness has had a long and well-known career as an artist. His densely layered, colorful abstract paintings have been shown at museums and galleries around the world. He’s also long explored world-building through his art, expanding his designs to maze-like environments and staging sprawling events and parties.

Recently, however, McGinness has showed a new side of his creative journey. He has just published an art book, Trip Advisor: Notes From over 25 Years of Psychedelic Voyages, from Blurring Books. The colorful tome collages together images of McGinness's paintings and photos of his studio and life with the raw diaries he kept beginning in 1999, as he chronicled his own mind’s voyages on psilocybin mushrooms, alongside essays reflecting on what they have meant and continue to mean to him.

So, what insight do these trips offer about art and life? What might you gain creatively and what are the pitfalls? Ryan McGinness is our guide into the world of psychedelics and art today.