Toby graduated from Falmouth College of Art and then studied painting and drawing as a post graduate at the Royal Academy Schools. All students were obligated to draw from the life model and it was here, under the tutelage of numerous artists and academicians of great merit that an appreciation of the importance of drawing and figurative painting began to develop.
Since leaving the R.A. Schools in 1999, Toby has been developing his practise and has exhibited widely and been selected on a number of occasions for the Royal Academy Summer Show, BP Portrait Award (winning the Travel Award in 2006), Discerning Eye Exhibition, Jerwood Drawing Prize and the Holburne Portrait Prize. Toby won the Prince of Wales Drawing Award in 2005 and was elected to the RP in 2006, winning the Changing Faces Prize that year.In 2007 he worked his way around part of the west country making portraits of the rural community from huntsmen to hurdle makers, shepherds and charcoal-burners to New Forest Verderers. This was exhibited in Dorset County Museum in 2008. He won the Lynn Painter-Stainers Prize in 2009.