Epis: 347- Alexis Rockman on 'owning' natural history
Connecticut- and New York City-based artist Alexis Rockman talks about:
His semi-exodus from Manhattan, where he\u2019s lived his whole life, to a fairly rural part of Connecticut called Warren; leaving his Tribeca studio of 33 years and building a new one on the property of their house in Warren; his early love and interest in animals through his anthropologist mom\u2019s encouragement which led to everything from keeping fish, turtles and iguanas in his childhood room to going scuba diving and spending a lot of time in Australia, where his stepfather was from, encountering wombats, Komodo dragons, and large flightless birds; his appreciation of science fiction movies of the late 60s and early 70s, and how the ideas in those movies were an influence on his apocalyptic paintings; the origins of his painting \u2018Manifest Destiny,\u2019 which is in the collection of the Smithsonian Museum; his recent work, which is in conversation with historic painters \u2013 Courbet, Clyfford Still, Peder Balke \u2013 and the joy of painting in addition to addressing climate change; how he jumped for joy for \u2018owning\u2019 natural history, as a painter, when he first established his artistic vision at the start of his career in the mid-1980s; working as a vision artist for films, including Life of Pi and the remake of the Little Mermaid; and how he feels about his relative \u2018fame,\u2019 and the ebbs and flows of success.