Q: How long has this been your studio?
A: Three and a half years. We were preparing to move to New York from Paris, and we had only 10 days to find an apartment to live in, with space for my studio. We wanted to be in Harlem, to be close to my daughter’s school. It was hard, but then we found this brownstone. I love it. The wood built-ins are so good, you don’t need much furniture.
Q: Your studio space is on the top floor, in what would have been a bedroom. How did you make it ready to work in?
A: I put a blue tarp on the walls, because I didn’t want to spoil the brick. Then I put cardboard on the floor to protect it. You know, I need to not think about stains or anything like that. I have sometimes pretty lively movements, and I had to make it work for that.
Q: Do you like having a studio right in your home?
A: I’ve always had to have my studio near where I live. Absolutely. In Paris I had a door to open and I would walk into my apartment.
My studio in Paris was bigger. Sometimes I feel the space here is too small. But then that also makes me feel more free. Because this isn’t really my studio — my studio is in my brain. And so I’ve always thought, do I need a big studio space, or not? In the past I’ve ended up thinking no.
Q: What would be the drawback of a big space?
A: It would be a burden. I love to feel light. My work is really one of ideas: What would happen if I made three dots, one red, one blue, one yellow? You don’t need a big studio for that. It’s really simple. All that simplicity brings me to lightness. I don’t want to have tons of paper around. You can draw with a stick in the sand, at the beach. Maybe one day I’ll do a book like that.
Q: It looks like you still spend lots of time playing around with paint.
A: Sure. But in my work everything is about a simple idea and the energy to project it. My most radical book is “Mix It Up.” I just took paint, put it on my finger and put it on the page. That’s it. That’s what I’m looking for in all my work, that simplicity. I need to make sure the people who get my book can see that I made it with my hand, and I need them to think they are able to do the same. They need to see there is no barrier between the idea and the painting. So you see, the technique is not the most important part. The studio is not the most important part.
Q: And yet you’ve told me that you just bought a barn in France, for a new studio.
A: It’s true. I bought a barn in Normandy, and I’m going to turn it into a studio. It’s the first time I’ll have a really big studio with a lot of space for storage. I’ll have four work tables, instead of one. But if I had had a big studio before, maybe it would have been a bad thing. Maybe I wouldn’t have been able to make my work as simple as it needed to be.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.