John Goodrich writes about the paintings of Geoffrey Dorfman for a recent exhibition at Ober Gallery, Kent, Connecticut.

Goodrich writes: "Words will forever fall short in conveying the visual and tactile expressions of painting. Yet it seems safe to say that, for Dorfman the first gestures of paint start the hope of uncovering meaningful forms; the gathering flux confirms and strengthens these forms’ identities, and if all goes well, the forms become real — not as references to the external and literal, but according to the energies of paint itself. ('The painting is telling you exactly what it needs.') It’s a process of incited accidents in which painter and paint are accomplices… The primal forces in Dorfman’s paintings seem at once alien and familiar. They contain animated spaces, without any kind of fixed topography; a sense of internal scale without preconceived notions of height, width or depth; presences without the usual distinctions — so crucial to our everyday perceptions—between object and void. We must dig deeper than our usual cognitive powers to come to grips with these canvases. But they compel us to try, as we follow best we can the thread left by the artist who preceded us, searching countless paths. 'You have order. You depart from the order. Then you come back to it.' "