Jules Olitski’s paintings and sculpture from the 1970s – currently exhibited at Paul Kasmin Gallery – are not the spray-gun, brightly hued paintings that launched him into fame. Unlike those paintings from the ’60s, these are mostly fields in off colors like mustard yellow and graygreen, marked by dabs and thin passages of brighter hues. Some seem hard-earned, rough-hewn; others are more ethereal. The works in the show progress from sprayed fields to thickly troweled surfaces, while the monumental rough surfaces of steel spiral sculptures occupy the floor. But no matter the medium or the style, Mr. Olitski’s creative process is driven by one question: Does it work?

“All I’m doing when I’m making a painting is making a painting,” he said. “I’m not sure even when I’m making a landscape that I’m making a landscape. Here is a bird and here is a horizon. I’m still making a structure that has to work.”

He applies this sort of thinking to the many different parts of his oeuvre, which scholars have categorized as “core paintings,” “matter paintings,” “curtain pictures,” and “edge drawing.” In the last 10 years Olitski’s work has ventured away from pure abstraction, into direct references to the landscape.

And the “does it work?” approach is one he shares with artist friends like Kenneth Noland, Larry Poons, and Anthony Caro. “When we look at an artwork, we ask, does it work?” he said. “It’s about how things relate to each other and the compelling force of it, and the way these artists have ex pressed themselves.”

When I asked Mr. Olitski why, in the works shown at Kasmin, he used what scholars have called “edge drawing” – the technique of offsetting monochrome fields with strokes of varying color at the margins – he responded in terms of emotion. “It has do with a feeling one has, rather than thinking it will get the attention of others,” he said.

When talking with Mr. Olitski about his life and work, the conversation quickly turns to his friendships with major figures, such as the critic Clement Greenberg and sculptor David Smith.

He recalled Greenberg and a conversation they once had about “flow.” Greenberg had showed his own paintings to Mr. Olitski, who suggested that the paintings stopped at the edge: “I said, ‘Why not let the feeling of flow that would go over the edge.’ My comment seemed to interest him; he repeated it once or twice over the years.”

Greenberg’s spirit is very much still present in Mr. Olitski’s working life. “I miss him in the studio. I’ll leave the studio after a night’s work and say, ‘So, Clem, what do you think?'”

Mr. Olitski appreciated Greenberg’s direct response. “In the studio, he was not for profundities. He’d say ‘Hey! Yeah! Do that more!’ or ‘Oh! That’s new!’ He was like a kid,” said the painter.

Greenberg was also a force behind the sculptures exhibited at Kasmin. Mr. Olitski remembers working with a bit of clay on a 10 inches by 10 inches surface, making some concentric circles.

“Clem said, ‘Why not do that big?’ It was encouraging. And I did begin, with cor-ten steel, making larger sculptures based on that initial little thing,” said Mr. Olitski.

The sculptures also bring up the name of another old friend: David Smith. “His sculpture was exciting. It gave me a lift, which great art does. But I don’t think I was influenced by his work itself. It was just the spirit of the guy,” he said.

Mr. Olitski credits the Old Masters, rather than his contemporaries, as the primary influences on his work, especially Rembrandt. “The first Rembrandt I saw was at the World’s Fair in Flushing Meadows in the 1930s,” he said. “I was just so thrilled by it. There was a guard, and I watched him until he was at the other end of the gallery, and his back was to me, and I quickly touched the painting!”

His story about the origin of his spray paintings is just as primary. He was teaching at Bennington and had brought his students to visit Kenneth Noland’s studio. The sculptor Anthony Caro joined them.

“The students just sat there on the floor against the wall and were mute. The silence had to be broken. Tony said that what he wanted for his sculpture was a certain density of material. I made a rejoinder – I’m not sure how serious I meant it to be – ‘What I would like for my art would be a cloud of color in the sky that is evanescent.’ The students laughed at that; I got a rise out of them, at least.”

Later, when he was in bed, the professor thought about making it happen. “I began to wonder how I could achieve that, and I thought – a spray gun! That started the adventure with the spray gun,” he said. “And oy yoy yoy, it was so exciting!”

Greenberg and others have insisted that Mr. Olitski’s paintings are first and foremost “vehicles of feeling.” Is this why Mr. Olitski works all night – during those dark hours when feeling, uncensored, rises to the surface?

Mr. Olitski said it is actually a habit that has persisted since childhood, stemming from a turbulent family life. “Night was the only time I felt safe. I slipped into the bathroom, and would draw in there. I could be myself,” he said.

Mr. Olitski once stated that it was rare for artists to get better over the years. At age 84, does he still believe that? “I think it’s true, that it’s rare to get better. Some artists may get comfortable, and the daring that happens, dies or falters. As to my getting better, I think that’s best left to others to say,” he said.

Until April 29, “Jules Olitski: The Seventies: Paintings and Sculpture” at Paul Kasmin Gallery, 293 Tenth Avenue, at 27th Street.