aterrier

Call it his Chinese restaurant conversion.Nearly two decades ago, as a 21-year-old art student in New York City, Alexis Rockman sat at a formica table, green tea in hand, staring at the eels in the restaurant’s fish tank. It was nearly midnight. He’d just completed a painting, one of those colorful, emotionally wrought abstracts popular in art circles. But instead of being filled with joy, he was depressed, a feeling he knew a thing or two about. A few years earlier, he’d suffered a nervous breakdown. “It was like being on an island gradually engulfed by water,” he recalls, as if mental collapse might result from global warming.

 

Then, in the eerie orange light of the restaurant, Rockman found an inner resolve. I hate abstract paintings, he finally admitted to himself. Why don’t I have the courage to paint animals?

 

Steve Fishman. Wired Magazine