Bruce Dorfman's prolific career spans over fifty years. A longtime faculty member of the Art Students League in New York, he has taught at the ASL since 1964. As a young artist, Dorfman himself studied at the Art Students League with celebrated artists such as Yasuo Kuniyoshi, Arnold Blanch and Charles H. Alston.

Over the years, Dorfman has pushed the boundaries of painting as a practice, an idea, and as an object. His abstract, multi-media works largely defy categorization. What the artist refers to as "composite paintings", his works are constructed from swaths and pops of vibrant color and an assortment of materials and textures. Art critic and curator Phyllis Braff writes: "Dorfman has long been interested in questioning what a painting might be. He probes tangibility, for example, with forms that straddle a line between recognition and nonrecognition." 

Among numerous notable accolades, Dorfman received a major grant from the Pollock-Kransner Foundation in 2017 in recognition of a lifetime in artistic achievement.