Tor Freeman
I was born in London, but a South African mother meant frequent trips there when I was little, and memories of holidays with my grandparents next to the sea are some of my most powerful and influential. Leaving secondary school, I knew I wanted to study art, but hadn't really registered that illustration might be a degree all by itself. Finding that it was, I went to Kingston, and meeting a class of twenty other people interested in the same things as me was sort of a revelation - here were more people who'd drawn fairies in their teens, liked to talk about types of pencil and thought Maurice Sendak was wonderful.