Gregory Block
Gregory Block was born in Kansas City, Missouri, in 1986 and moved to Colorado as a child, growing up near Steamboat Springs. At a Waldorf school he discovered a love of painting, sculpture, music and the natural world, and he drew constantly as a way of studying what was around him, from rocks and birds to people’s faces. That curiosity took him to Colorado College, where he earned a BA in biology in 2009, summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa. As a student he chose not to take painting courses or work under a mentor. He taught himself instead, through experiment and close study of the painters he admired, and later attended the New York Studio School summer session in 2011. Since graduating he has devoted himself to painting, and Fine Art Today has called him “one of the most promising young artists in the representational art world.” Block draws freehand, finding shapes by looking rather than projecting or tracing, and lets each painting change as he works through it. His subjects range across landscape, still life, portraiture and abstraction. He has had solo exhibitions in Chicago, Denver and Steamboat Springs. His group exhibitions include Art Miami, EXPO Chicago, Art of the State at the Arvada Center, Imagining the West at the Steamboat Art Museum, and Artists for the New Century at the Bennington Center for the Arts. He lives in Denver, Colorado.