This particular stretch of the ice sheet, at 82°N above Svalbard was as far as our ship could travel at this moment in the season. The seemingly desolate landscape is as close as I can imagine landing on an alien planet. The light was fleeting, unpredictable, eerie, but hypnotising.

Fascinated by the natural world from an early age, Toby WRIGHT spent much of his early years drawing in Monaco’s oceanographic museum, where he also was inspired by paintings hanging on the walls from arctic expeditions from early 1900’s. In particular, the painter Louis Tinayre was an expedition painter for the explorer Prince Albert 1st of Monaco. Over 100 years later, Toby WRIGHT found himself drawing and painting in the same locations involved in awareness campaigns highlighting the precious nature of our polar regions. Since that time, he has pursued expedition painting into other extreme locations: Antarctic, Alps, Himalayas, to bring the experience of raw nature to a public far removed from it.