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Sam Toft Biography
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Born in June 1964, Sam Toft's earliest ambition was to work in a post office. Instead she has been a fire extinguisher salesman, a silver service waitress, a death grants advisor, a Wedgwood Rooms worker, a catering manager, a civil servant, a student, an au pair and an unemployed person. She has lived in Staffordshire, Cheshire, Shropshire, Le Vaudreuil Ville Nouvelle, Essex, Surrey, Liverpool, Balham, Tooting, Ealing and Middlesex but has settled for the now in Brighton& Hove.
Sam Toft graduated from Kingston Polytechnic with a BA in Applied Social Science (having transferred from a business sandwich degree with French). She had not a clue what to do but knew through and through that she would never be a Poet. A career in the civil service was not well tolerated and catering management wasn't really where the heart was. A change in direction was needed. Sharpish. She moved up to Liverpool and did a BTEC in General Art and Design at City of Liverpool Community College where an inspirational teacher by the name of Hering gave her the confidence to give it a go with her pictures.
She made so many handmade cards (does anyone remember them?) and applied herself to illustration work and doing caricatures and making wedding invitations. But best of all, she liked doing just pictures.
"I am lucky that the accident of my birth left me at the edge of things - ever watchful, observant and compelled to link scenes and memories into some kind of narrative. Stripes, textures, delicious whiffs, children's rhymes, eccentric characters, lovely hats, nostalgic tunes and beautiful dogs are all things that catch my attention and fuel my imagination. I am grateful to these favourite things that make my creativity possible, along with my eyes, my hands and especially my mum."
Sam has been working as an artist these past 12 years using mixed media: Oil pastels, coloured inks, scraffito and the innovative fingers-and-thumbs technique. She met Mr Mustard a while back dawdling along the seafront and he is so glad to have her drawing him in pictures, colouring them in so well and hardly ever going over the lines. She is delighted to have work published as cards and limited edition prints by The Art Group and her work can be seen nationwide in Waterstones, Borders and IKEA. She has her pictures in some lovely galleries and art fairs and sells well both here and in America. She is an incredibly modest individual and would respectfully advise you, if you like her work at all, to buy one of her masterpieces sooner rather than later, as if she gets any more famous you won't be able to afford one. |
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Exhibitions and Awards
No Exhibitions or Awards |
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Latest News
Friday 20th November 2009
Sam Toft on BBC2
The Art On Your Walls With Sue Perkins, showed on Monday November 16th on BBC 2 at 9.00 pm and featured CollectorsPrints artist Sam Toft. To view the programme click on the link below.
"Sue Perkins charts the changes in British taste towards domestic art by delving into the stories of contemporary bestsellers, charting the history of post-war prints and aiming to see first hand what the average British person displays above their mantelpiece. Half of British living rooms have art on their wall bought from high street stores, and many of the British artists who created them are among the country's most successful - but we've never heard of them.
Sue also tracks down the creators of recent history's most popular prints to discover their opinions on the images that changed their lives. Some of these iconic images are reproductions of famous artists, and some are unknowns, but who are these artists, and why are they so popular?
She discusses Tretchikoff, the artist behind the bestselling prints of the 50s and 60s such as the Green Lady, with Red or Dead founder Wayne Hemmingway, and meets Scottish miner-turned-painter Jack Vettriano, the artist who created the popular Singing Butler. Sue tracks down Ullswater snapper Mel Allen and chats to Spencer Rowell, the photographer behind Athena's Man and Baby, before heading to Cornwall to get to the bottom of the two million selling Tennis Girl by meeting its flamboyant creator Martin Elliot. Finally, Sue meets Sam Toft, creator of Mr Mustard, the quirky figure featured in a series of bestselling prints.
Sue also meets Terence Conran to find out about the revolution in interior design that took place after the Second World War, including the introduction of Habitat onto the high street, which made good design accessible to the whole community, and how that in turn has influenced the post-war taste of Great Britain."
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