The painter talks about the meditative aspects of sweeping his studio floor.

Question: Do you follow a creative process when you work?

Bleckner: My personal process is one of maintaining a very, I would say, monastic discipline.  I mean, I essentially do the same thing everyday, 7 days a week.  And I’ve done that for years besides from the things I have to do, besides from socializing, which I like to do occasionally, aside from traveling, which I like to do less now that I’m older, and that you have to take off your shoes.  I basically go to my studio and… You know, as trivial as it might seem to somebody else, it is always something… It’s always a little problem that needs to be figured out.  So I feel like my studio is a laboratory, you know.  And, you know, there is a sense of alchemy, there is a sense of chemistry, there is a sense of joy, there is a sense of the pleasure that I have in playing with these stuff, paint the stuff, you know, that I basically understand, on some level, you could garnish it with all kinds of theoretical constructs.  But it’s a person alone in a room, making things with their hands.  And I like to keep it that simple, a lot of days.  And when you’re making things and when you have your little cottage industry, there’s always something to do.  When I go to my studio, I start up by sweeping the floor.  I start out by making sure everything’s in order.  I start out by trying to make sure my mind is clear.  And then, I think about the problem that didn’t get solved yesterday.  And that opens it up for me.  So I think that’s the process.  What’s the problem today is the question I ask myself.  There always seems to be something. 

Question: What gives you happiness in your work?

Bleckner:    I’m most happy when I… I’m not distracted when I’m working, when I could go to my studio, when I, somehow, could live in that presence, that presence in the [present].  And I could do it repetitively so that you kind of build up a steam.  You know, it’s like an engine, it’s like a percolator.  And sometimes, it just becomes, you know… It really becomes a kind of a concentration that’s so pure that I think is both playful and imaginative and opens up all kinds of new possibilities for me.