At 85, the painter Dorothea Rockburne is still blazing trails, making art in the unorthodox way she has for seven decades. “There’s stuff in my head,” Ms. Rockburne, an abstractionist with lively, penetrating eyes and a ready smile, recently explained. “It’s really important for me to get it out of my head and into a viewable situation.’’

From experience, she’s learned that it can take a while to figure out how to get concepts onto a wall or canvas. It took about a year, for example, to figure out how to recreate several of her breakthrough works from 1967 through 1972 for a show opening Sunday at Dia Art Foundation in Beacon, N.Y.

It will be the first time generations of art enthusiasts will see the work of this underappreciated artist in person, rather than from reproductions in catalogs and art magazines. It had been almost 50 years since the artist herself had seen some of them.