Geoffrey Doig-Marx (GDM) is a multidisciplinary American artist whose creative career spans visual art, dance, choreography, theatre, photography, writing, education, and design. A self-taught visual artist, Geoffrey began painting after moving to Harlem in 2011, discovering a new artistic language rooted in movement, emotion, color, identity, and the human figure.

His work reflects a lifetime of storytelling and reinvention. Before establishing himself as a visual artist, Geoffrey built a career of more than four decades as a professional dancer, choreographer, director, and educator. That background remains deeply present in his artwork: figures seem to move across the canvas, gestures carry emotional weight, and composition is approached with the same sense of rhythm and theatricality that shaped his work onstage.

Geoffrey's paintings have been exhibited throughout New York City, including his first solo exhibition at The Lanyon 36 Gallery in 2015. He has held extended artistic residencies at POSH NYC, The West End Lounge, and The Pecora in Harlem, and his work has been displayed in prominent dance and cultural spaces.

His visual practice ranges from figurative portraiture to abstraction and mixed-media work, often incorporating unconventional materials, found objects, text, tape, and layered surfaces. Themes of identity, memory, sexuality, resilience, popular culture, and the experience of being seen—or overlooked—run throughout his work.

Geoffrey continues to maintain an active career in the performing arts and education, teaching Jazz Dance at Marymount Manhattan College, Montclair State University, and Northeastern University in New York City. He is also an author and entrepreneur and the creator of a patented dancewear concept designed to help maintain warmth around the hamstrings while allowing freedom of movement.

Whether working with paint, a camera, a dancer, a piece of text, or a garment, Geoffrey approaches each medium as another way to tell a story. His work is ultimately connected by one enduring fascination: people—their bodies, histories, contradictions, vulnerability, and extraordinary capacity for reinvention.

ARTIST’S STATEMENT

My work begins with the human figure, but it is rarely just about the body. I am interested in what the body carries—history, identity, sexuality, vulnerability, strength, memory, and the marks left by our experiences.

I spent much of my life as a dancer, choreographer, and performer, so movement has always been my first language. When I began painting, that language simply moved from the stage to the canvas. I approach a painting much as I approach choreography: through gesture, rhythm, tension, balance, instinct, and the relationship between what is revealed and what remains hidden.

My work is often raw, layered, and imperfect by design. I use figures, words, symbols, found materials, paint, tape, and unexpected marks to create surfaces that feel lived in rather than polished. I am drawn to beauty, but I am equally interested in discomfort. Some works confront sexuality and identity; others explore religion, memory, prejudice, humor, or the private experiences we carry with us.

I do not want to tell the viewer exactly what to see. I want the work to begin a conversation. A figure may appear beautiful to one person and unsettling to another. A word can wound, empower, or completely change meaning depending on who is reading it. That tension interests me.

Ultimately, my paintings are an extension of the way I have always created: instinctively, physically, and without much interest in staying inside one category. Whether I am working with a dancer onstage or a figure on canvas, I am searching for the same thing—a moment that feels honest, human, and alive.

Geoffrey Doig-Marx (GDM)