Bleckner is an American contemporary artist whose art deals with the subject matter of memory and loss, particularly within the context of the AIDS crisis beginning in the 1980s. He believed in the impermanence of life and was also interested in painting the body viewed from a microscopic level, including forms related to DNA and cancer cells. His poetic works often employ recurring symbolic imagery, such as candelabras, doves, and flowers, rendered with a blurred, glowing sense of light. Bleckner studied at New York University and the California Institute of the Arts. He exhibited a retrospective at the Guggenheim Museum in New York in 1995.