Press

“Tom Block isn’t just a playwright. Or a visual artist. He’s a force of nature hellbent on saving the world by providing vehicles for artists and new voices.”
(International Human Rights Art Festival, Larry Dean, The Dramatist Magazine, May 1, 2023)

"Imagine a juggler expertly keeping many balls in the air . . . This is downtown theater at its smartest."
(Duck, Show-Score, NYC, October 23, 2019).

“Tom Block has created a brilliant selection of characters to bring us into the core feelings of angst, anxiety and betrayal that now accompany us daily as we watch the values of our country unravel before us.”
(Duck, Susan Hall, Berkshire Fine Arts, October 22, 2019)

"Tom Block engages with some lofty themes and mind-bending questions in this comedic epic set in a slightly more surreal version of today’s New York City,"
(Sub-Basement, Will Jacobs, Theatre is Easy, NYC, March 28, 2017)

“The writing is literary and full of imagery . . . heavily laden with surrealistic numerology and metaphors, especially the latter third, ‘the distillation of destiny.’ Think of a Dan Brown–like adventure penned by an erudite Talmudic scholar.”
(The Fool Returns, Kirkus Reviews, NY, Oct. 26, 2014)

"If you’d like to explore where theater will be ten years from now it is probably worth a look."
(Butterfly, Tim Treanor, DC Theatre Scene, February 19, 2013)

“A fascinating and rewarding look at the multiple dimensions of faith, theory, and inspiration that go into Block’s work."
(White Noise, Jon Barry, DC Theatre Scene, June 9, 2012)

“Block’s evident enthusiasm for the revelation of these common roots as a way forward for Muslim-Jewish relations propels this great read.”
(Shalom/Salaam: A Story of a Mystical Fraternity, Publisher’s Weekly, NYC, October 27, 2010)

“A dazzling array of colors sprang out from the canvasses lining the walls of the Pyramid Atlantic Arts Center in downtown Silver Spring on Saturday evening. Bright, vibrant reds and oranges mingled to create deeply textured, haunting portraits of human rights activists from all over the world.”
(Silver Spring artist crafts portraits of courage, Jeremy Arias, Montgomery County Gazette, April 29, 2009)

“Block has taken the same artistic premise and used it with a distinct purpose, leaving a lot of room for contemplation by the viewer -- but with direction. Indeed, although each work in the café space stands on its own, it is together with the others that the unifying significance emerges most clearly -- perhaps an unexpected intervention into your thoughts and feelings whilst eating your gelato on a warm summer's afternoon.”
("Cousins" Mixes Abstraction, Philosophy, Claudia Rousseau, Montgomery County Gazette, August 31, 2005)

“Thickly painted expressionist portraits of the survivors line the white gallery walls. The art of Van Gogh comes to mind in Block's painting called Albanian Refugee.”
Tom Block: The Human Rights Painting Project, Keith Buckner, Greensboro News-Record, July 28, 2005)

“Block seems to have flattened under a microscope images that morph and mold, glide and delve into one another as they try to find that higher ground. With more depth than the larger works of the Baal Shem Tov series, yet less than the small 'process' abstracts, the Heretical pieces are generously painted with oil on old decaying wooden palettes. These works play out the metaphor of transcendence over the earthly flesh by building up upon themselves; revealing in swirls and valleys of palpable color the search beyond the iconic and the prophetic. They are the knowledge that comes through the translation a physical mark-making as visual/verbal communication."
(The Tales We Tell: The Work of Tom Block, Elizabeth Donovan, Link VI, Baltimore, MD, Summer 2001)

“The thirty year-old American, admirer of Bacon and Giacometti who broke away from journalism to submerge himself in this other absorbing whirlwind has decided to bring his latest work together in an exhibition entitled Paintings from the In- Between Place, with twelve oil paintings. Tom Block confesses to being gripped by an unbreakable creative passion. "I'm painting a great deal; more than ever," he says. All of the work in the show has been painted between the months of February and October and offers stronger, more vibrant colors, fruit of his development towards a stage that is, in his words, more visually aggressive, with objects and figures that are less labyrinthine, less tormented.”
(The Purpose of Painting is to Reflect the Spiritual, the Ineffable, Juan Domingo Fernandez, Diario Hoy, Caceres, Spain, November 17, 1993) 

Selected Bibliography

(click on any underlined link to see the article or hear the interview)