Toland Scott, Tiffany

My name is Tiffany Toland-Scott, but I prefer to be called Tiff, and I was born and raised in the Cascade foothills of Washington State, in and around the real life town of Roslyn, which most people know as Cicely, Alaska from the show 'Northern Exposure'. As a child I struggled with a crippling musculo-skeletal condition that left me unable to participate in many physical activities and I turned to drawing my horses when I couldn't ride them. Eventually the drawn horses became unicorns, and my love of fantasy was born.

Being very competitive gave me the desire to be the best at drawing in my class, and it eventually became an all-consuming pursuit of perfection. Shortly before my sixteenth birthday I decided to drop out of high school so I would have more time to spend on my artwork, a plan which obviously made my parents very happy (teehee). But it wasn't long before I had earned my GED and was spending every day, and most nights, making artwork. At the age of 17, I had my very first art show, and every day we sold out. I think that's when my parents realized I wasn't totally out of my mind.

A few years later I decided to move to Phoenix to obtain a degree in video game design, but quickly realized the life of the game designer was not for me. After switching majors a couple of times, and sometimes having double-majors and taking 36 credit hours a semester while attending two colleges, I was burnt out, fed up, and pretty much convinced that a "practical" art job was not my style. The only teacher I got along with asked me, after grading my final project, why I was even there and told me I could go into the workforce today if I wanted to. So, I did.