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Toby Wright

Steering Committee Ambassador

Following his Bachelor of Arts degree in illustration from the U.K, Toby Wright travelled to Florence Italy, where he graduated and taught at The Florence Academy of Art. His positions included director of the drawing program for the sculpture department, and principal instructor in the advanced painting program.

Finding his early inspiration in the natural world, Florence developed his spectrum of subjects with the study of the old masters. After Florence, Toby WRIGHT continued his career with various galleries from London, to New York and Los Angeles, balancing his personal figurative work with various portraits commissions.

His love for Nature has led him to unique places. As an artist aboard the Elysium expedition to the Arctic, Toby WRIGHT painted in the extreme conditions of Svalbard, Greenland, and Iceland. This has influenced his work and inspired him to engage further in expedition painting, pushing his artistic skillset into new environments: drawing live animals underwater, or painting glaciers at 12,000 feet.

With a passion for working from life, he engages directly with nature; whether snorkelling with orca and humpback whales in the Arctic waters of Norway, or drawing underwater with the sea lions of the sea of Cortez. He has developed his climbing and mountaineering skills to allow him to explore the high peaks of the Alps with his paints, in the footsteps of greats such as Turner, Sargent, or Compton.

When not on expedition, he paints in his studio in Monaco. His most recent commission is a historic 13-person group portrait for Monaco’s oceanographic museum. It represents for the first time since 1909, the museum’s council of administrators under Prince Albert II of Monaco.

Member of explorer’s club of New York, the “Académie des sciences et des arts de la mer” in France, and ambassador to the Florence Academy of Art.