Toby Raine is a contemporary artist living in Tāmaki Makaurau, Auckland. He has a distinctive approach to his work, moving large quantities of oil paint across the surface of a canvas with confident strokes, creating expressive, emotive, gestural paintings.Toby spent eleven years studying at Elam School of Fine Art in Auckland, beginning in 2006 when he was 23-years-old. Over the next decade he would go on to complete a degree, then a masters, then a doctorate in Fine Arts. In this episode Toby talks about how he chooses his subjects, how he achieves the delicate balance between representation and abstraction and how his paintings reflect his personality. We discuss his journey to being represented by dealer galleries in Australia as well as in NZ, why he doesn't like his paintings to be described as portraits and how he communicates with the viewer through his titles.https://www.instagram.com/tobyrainepaintingNgā mihi, thanks for listening!See the artist's work on our blog https://www.creativematters.co.nz/blog You can follow us for updates on https://www.instagram.com/creativematterspodcast/ Please rate and review our show to help others find us https://podcasts.apple.com/nz/podcast/creative-matters/id1561034043