About Toby
Now that I have retired, I have more freedom to paint and to experiment with different techniques.
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My delight is in sharing it with you.
The excitement and inspiration for painting and drawing comes from the long daily walks I love doing since I retired, either in London where I live, or in the rural areas of Cambridgeshire where I spend a lot of my time.
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As well as stunning nature scenes, I love painting our magnificent urban environments, including street art, which I admire for its ephemeral and intimate qualities. The media I use mainly comprise oils, watercolors, pastels and charcoal. Whatever the subject, my constant challenge is to do justice to the compelling and mysterious beauty around us – the atmosphere and figurative/abstract qualities compelling my imagination.
I grew up in a family who loved painting and drawing. I loved watching my mother turn the ‘nothing’ on a blank sheet of paper into an amazing picture. It was like alchemy and it inspired me, my late sister and my brother to draw and paint. We grew up in the beautiful Suffolk countryside, and I was inspired especially by the long-distance views across fields and trees.
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Most of all, I loved the late afternoon and evening skies. At school, I became gripped by a compulsion to paint sunsets. That became something of a classroom joke, for which my many efforts dotted about the place earned the nickname ‘Syfretian’ sunsets.
Later in my mid-teens, I had an inspirational art teacher, Graham Drew. Whenever I had a spare moment, I would be in the art room, soaking up his patient tuition, wisdom and encouragement. It was a place where I felt safe and ‘at home’ and could forget everyday pressures.
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Graham encouraged me to think of a career as an artist, but my parents wanted me to follow a more traditional path, which they believed would stand me in better stead for the future. So, off to university and then to London, where in my 20s I met another inspirational artist and teacher, Stuart Knowles, still one of my closest friends to this day, during evening classes at the Camden Art School. And later, I learned much from Cecil Collins, a well-known artist from the mid Thirties
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Now that I have retired, I have more freedom to paint and to experiment with different techniques.
​
My delight is in sharing it with you.