Hofmann’s Daybreak presents a happy cave shape, a furnace tunneling away from the viewer while hovering on the surface. A pink cloud, the barest wash overtakes the stalwart red. The innocent yellow leads us in and out of inception. Painting is an opportunity to be put on the spot, to start something and work it out. Hofmann’s paintings are events.

The poet said that you don’t make a poem of thoughts, you make it with words put on like paint on a painting. Hofmann could put it on. His color is luscious, symphonic and pulsing. Jeweled Yellow is happily lathered. Towers of pinks, reds, fuchsias, some hopeful browns and moody purples rest in a yellow net. For Hofmann, what was important in painting was the search, the adventure. This daring piece is humorous and sad. It creates echoes and overtones.

Hofman’s paintings dance. It’s the dance of the self: all thought, feeling, desire, touch. In The Chair, kite shapes and jostling pie shapes move about in space. The varied yellows and ochres bump into the mischievous reds and set a raucous rhythm going: ability and possibility.