Artist Biography

Adrian “Toby” Joseph Rydge is a self-taught abstract expressionist based in Bora Bora, French Polynesia. Born in Hong Kong and raised in Australia, Toby comes from a rich heritage — a father of Scottish/Irish Celtic origin and a mother of Tahitian and Czechoslovakian descent, a former international beauty queen with royal Polynesian (Maohi) roots. This multicultural upbringing shaped both his eye and his sensibility.

His engagement with art began while studying Art History at the Australian National University, where he became absorbed by the symbolic power of images — how a single mark or field of color could hold meaning far beyond what was literally shown, and how that meaning shifted depending on who was looking. That discovery continues to inform his practice: he holds that the viewer’s own reading of a work is as vital as the act of painting it.

Though based in French Polynesia, Toby has deliberately steered his practice away from the coconut trees, lagoons, and postcard seascapes commonly associated with the region, drawn instead to abstraction as a language in its own right — form, gesture, and color pursued for what they express beyond the literal image. This instinct has a family lineage: his paternal grandfather, Albert Rydge, trained under the Meldrum School of Tonalism in Melbourne and was a close friend of the noted Australian artist Lloyd Rees. Time spent in his grandfather’s studio as a child left an early and lasting impression that continues to inform how Toby approaches color and composition.

That same eye for refinement finds expression in his second creative pursuit: rare, natural Tahitian pearls. In their exotic, untouched beauty, Toby finds a form of creative guidance — a feeling that feeds the same drive that carries into his abstract work. Traces of both pursuits surface in his paintings, which echo the Japanese aesthetic of wabi-sabi and its embrace of imperfection and transience. His work has been exhibited at La Villa Mahana and Saint James in Bora Bora, and now hangs in private homes and businesses around the world.

He invites audiences to interpret his work for themselves, becoming active participants in the meaning it holds.