Artist Joe Mockbee in front of some of his whimsical paintings.From the Kalamazoo, Mich., Gazette:
Local artist Joe Mockbee wants to capture mental illness on paper. But he's not sure he's done it yet.
Mockbee -- a subject of the recent local documentary "A Long Strange Trip," a film about people with various kinds of mental illness that debuted in April at Western Michigan University's Little Theatre -- was unemployed for 16 years, grappling with paranoid schizophrenia and mania and shuffling between his parents' house and adult foster-care homes.
"I got myself into imagining people were plotting against me, and my imagination went pretty deep," he said. "Part of what I'd like to do as an artist is to illustrate that mania I felt in those days. I don't know that I've done that yet."
The 54-year-old artist, who grew up in the Winchell neighborhood of Kalamazoo and now has his own apartment, has been making art for decades. He currently has 15 whimsical watercolors on display through Aug. 1 at the Alma Powell Branch Library's Barnabee Gallery, at 1000 W. Paterson St., in Kalamazoo.
"I do sort of abstract cartoons -- subtle, not necessarily funny," said Mockbee, who has had little formal art training. "I want to leave a bit to the imagination."
