Jennifer Samet interviews painter Mary Heilmann at her Bridgehampton, New York studio.

Samet writes that Heilmann "made the radical move to become a painter (right when painting was declared dead), but her work is always object-like and idea-based. Her punk aesthetic is manifested in wild colors, fake drips, and slightly off-kilter geometries. She joins shaped canvases and designs installations that include hand-made, movable chairs. She works like a conceptual artist, executing ideas in series and repetition, based on sustained meditation. The result is a freshness and instinctual quality, in opposition to the laborious existentialism of formalist abstraction."