Alexis Rockman

Artist Alexis Rockman was raised in Manhattan. Which, he says, may be the reason so much of his painting is about nature--both real and imagined. He spent his childhood hanging out at the Museum of Natural History and the Bronx Zoo, dreaming of the exotic world beyond the sidewalks of New York. As an adult, Rockman has traveled all over the globe to find the subjects for his bright paintings--works that often contain a dark warning about what the earth's future may look like. But some of his best known works concern his home town. He spent years researching just what would happen to the East River and Brooklyn's shoreline in a post-global warming cataclysm for Manifest Destiny, a scientifically-based, large-scale painting of the view from the west bank. His latest project is a mid-career retrospective at the Smithsonian American Art Museum, on view starting in November 2010 (31 minutes).

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