Rail: The brown paper is industrially produced, and in that way, it corresponds with your work from the seventies, like 2, 4, 6, 8 (1969/70). Were you thinking about making that connection when you worked on these?

Rockburne: Well, as you know, I’ve been involved with paper for most of my life as an artist. Paper always seems so magical to me, but I don’t use nostalgia. That isn’t that part of my life.

Rail: Notably, these are called drawings. These are not assemblages or collages. Can you say a word about that distinction for you?

Rockburne: I don’t have to. It’s a feeling. It can’t be translated into words.

Rail: So when you were working on these pieces, how did you sense that the arrangements that you were coming to were the arrangements that you wanted to present?

Rockburne: That’s all intuitive. I don’t think when I work. Like I said, I think before and I think afterward. But while I’m working, it’s all intuitive.

Rail: A sense of geometry comes through, and of course the folds of the bag resonate with some of your most well-known works, like the Drawing Which Makes Itself (ca. 1973), or in the show, there are two pieces from the series on Egypt.

Rockburne: You know, the work just comes out of nowhere in a way, but the nowhere is, of course, me.

Rail: The bags have dates stamped on them, September 11, which of course—especially because we’re in New York—makes me think of the twin towers. Was that intentional?

Rockburne: It’s part of the identity of the paper bag, that’s all. My work is not about symbolism or narrative. It never has been. It’s about pure, raw feeling.

Rail: What is it like to have work from the seventies, like 2, 4, 6, 8, in the same gallery as your brand-new work?

Rockburne Well, it feels like my life. My work contains my emotional life. I like the title of the show, Time Measures Itself, because that really discusses what we’re saying philosophically from another level, and that’s really true.

Rail: Time being something we rely on as constant, but also something we know to feel malleable.

Rockburne: Yes. It’s so strange for me because almost no one from my peer group is alive. My generation is pretty much gone, and I feel alone. When you’re alone, time also moves differently. I think that’s part of the reason for the title. I didn’t spend a lot of time thinking about it, it just came into my mind, and I felt it was right.

Rail: And you have a new sculpture in the exhibition—

Rockburne: Yes, it’s called Infinity (2025/26).

Rail: That’s interesting. It certainly rubs against the concept of time measuring itself.

Rockburne: It was named before it was made. I mean, I have no idea how my creative process works, you know?

Rail: Its component parts include two tires, two sawhorses, and two oars. Six objects in total.

Rockburne: I knew that I had to get those oars, but where do you get oars in New York? [Laughter] I ordered them from Amazon, and they came painted the right color, with oar locks on them and everything. I was stunned. It’s a painter’s sculpture. Painters have a different concept of sculpture than sculptors.

Rail: I can’t help but make a connection to transportation. To me the oars correspond to movement over water, the tires to movement over land. The sawhorses, well, that’s a bit less direct.

Rockburne: I’ve been using sawhorses to hold up tables all through my life. They aren’t metaphorical or symbolic. I picked those out, specially. I love their red joints.

Rail: Yes, they do have an incredible pop. And I noticed there’s a brick in one of the tires.

Rockburne: Yes

Rail: It seems both stabilizing, but also—

Rockburne That’s what it’s for. But it’s also just damn beautiful, brick against rubber—that’s beautiful.

Rail: The colors in the piece—blue, white, and red—immediately connect to other works in the show. The color-pencil lines, for instance, in the vellum piece, Study for Discourse (1978). But also the blue oars are a similar shade of blue to the lines in your “Egyptian Paintings.”

Rockburne: Yes. I know what you mean, but I didn’t intend for that. These kinds of connections arise because my way of working hasn’t changed, even though I’ve gotten older. It’s a body of work, my life’s work, and the body talks to itself. [Laughter]

Rail: What about the tires? How did you decide they should be white?

Rockburne: First of all, I think tires are so beautiful. They’re a manufactured thing, and there’s something about the demands of what it means to be a tire that make it beautiful. As for why white, I just knew. It was something I just knew.

Rail: It changes the object—

Rockburne: Of course it changes it, and yet it makes it more itself.

Rail: Right. The tire is no longer defined by its utility. It becomes an aesthetic object, and so its formal aspects—it’s hollowness, it’s circularity—come to define it.

Rockburne: Yes, I love the black inside and the white outside. It took many coats of paint—more than you’d think! [Laughter] And it creates a contradiction, which gives the work a bit of tension, like when somebody fucks the wrong person.

Rail: How do you generate these titles?

Rockburne: I don’t know, but a lot of thought has gone into it, and a lot of living. This sculpture came about within the last two years, but I’ve been developing it for five years in various ways that I would then reject, and then I’d go back to it, and change something, and then change something else and go back to it, and so on.

Rail: Were you working on the sculpture and the brown paper bag drawings in tandem?

Rockburne: The sculpture goes back further.

Rail: I see. How did you realize, after so many iterations, that you had found the right combination of materials and orientation?

Rockburne: It’s not easy. I changed the sawhorses several times. Ultimately it’s a feeling I get, which comes from the body’s intuition and knowledge.

Rail: Does that connect back to what you were saying earlier, about it being a religious feeling?

Rockburne: I believe in a higher power. I don’t believe that I have been in full control of my own life. I believe that there’s a higher power that both helps and leads me, and I have to listen to it. And it’s beautiful.

Rail: I imagine at some points in your life it’s easier to follow, and at some points it’s harder.

Rockburne: Yes, but it’s not even about easier or harder. It’s just there. It’s a part of me. There is some force that informs me somehow—I don’t quite understand it, and I don’t ask for it. When I begin to work, I have to clear the decks. I need to make sure I’m not interrupted. The knowledge comes through the beauty of materials. But it’s also like, God, am I blessed? You know, I started drawing when I was a kid and this thing would happen. It’s like I wasn’t in charge of what my hand was doing. It is amazing being an artist, because the knowledge that comes out of my hands is not something I’m familiar with until I do it. It’s quite an incredible experience.

Rail: How does your awareness and attention to a higher power correspond with your love and appreciation for mathematics?

Rockburne: You know, I just took it for granted that I was all of a piece. When I began to see that the world was put together in terms of mathematics, I was made both larger and smaller by that knowledge. I felt larger because it is a powerful insight to experience; smaller because I realized I had no control, you know? There was something bigger than me going on and I was a very small part of that bigger thing. It’s like seeing the first sunset or the birth of a child. Theoretically you can understand it, but at the same time, it is miraculous and if you let it, it can change you.

Rail: So in the studio, you need to balance a sort of material practicality, let’s say, with an allowance for intuition, which of course can’t be forced.

Rockburne: It’s demanding. Intuition is demanding. Words come second to me, intuition comes first, and I have to translate my intuition. It’s like I’m always speaking in two languages.

Rail: What about risk? How do you feel that taking risks connects with this feeling or sense of being guided?

Rockburne: It’s not about risk, it’s about know-how. What I feel is a sense of belief in my know-how.

Rail: Do you feel when you’re making work? Sometimes when you’re making a work and making decisions about—

Rockburne: I never make decisions when I work. I make decisions before and after, but never when I work.

Rail: Do you ever feel a sense of doubt about those decisions?

Rockburne: Never, no. It’s not that I know what I’m doing, and yet, on another hand, I know exactly what I’m doing. It’s hard to put it into language, but it’s the language of experience.

Rail: The language of experience. I mean one word that comes to my mind is trust, and that you trust the choices, and you trust your intuition and you don’t second guess them or question them.

Rockburne: I don’t trust it. I believe it’s something that’s guiding me. It’s not about my trust. It’s about belief; it’s something bigger than me. I don’t know what that is. It’s bigger than me. It tells me what to do. It’s extremely beautiful. It’s so elegant and so beautiful that that beauty hurts, and that’s why I could tell when it’s real.

Rail: How about the idea of bravery? Do you feel that that plays any part in your experience in the studio?

Rockburne: No. I know what bravery is, and when it comes to work, it’s not about bravery. It’s something else. It’s a gift. It’s just a great gift. But I do wish I had ten more years to work. I would be more daring.

Rail: How do you think about being more daring?

Rockburne: Sexual. I think Arshile Gorky was pretty sexual. I’d just like to state it in a way that it can’t be denied, because I think art really is about sexuality and we’ve lost that. To me, sexuality is identity, it’s feeling, it’s relationships—it’s the important thing.

Rail: There are those who’d say the only important topics for art and literature are sex and death.

Rockburne: I disagree. How about life? How about love? On the deepest level, I experience my own work as a form of love.

Rail: What kind of love? Sexual? Fraternal? Parental?

Rockburne: None of those. It’s more like a universal love. I feel that, and I’ve always felt it, even as a child, I had a sense of love that came from the universe.