Ian has been a painter of the landscape observed for nearly two decades, painting in oil on board or canvas, usually on a horizontal format, and often as diptychs or triptychs. Ian states, "I have a love of the paint, and my medium is invariably applied vigorously, with thick and energetic impasto marks." Ian started as a plein-air landscape painter, making small scale works not wholly beholden to but derived from what was seen on location, and in reaction to a myriad of external as well as internal circumstances. He has notably traveled to Europe several times on pursuit of plein-air painting study and excursion over the years.

Ian also enjoys work in the art studio, more currently producing larger and more contemplated works, with the sky-scape becoming more and more predominant. Ian expounds, "Increasingly, as I experiment with a tension between realism and abstraction, I have abandoned the conventional horizontal landscape format in favor of the iconic square, with even the distinct horizon-line fading; as I attempt to create paintings with greater atmospheric ambiguity, and about the intrinsic impermanence of nature and the sublime."

Ian grew up in New England though has lived and traveled extensively in Europe. He now lives in Concord, NH and is a teacher at St. Paul's School were he serves as both the Director of the Fine Arts Program and the Head of the Arts Division. He earned a Bachelor of Arts degree from Bowdoin College in both Visual Art and English Literature and earned a Master of Arts in Art Education from the Rhode Island School of Design. He has participated in several residencies over time, most notably at the New York Studio School, the Humberside School of Art and Design in Hull, England, and at Studio Art Centers International in Florence, Italy. Mr. Torney is currently a Master of Fine Arts degree candidate at the Art Institute of Boston. Ian has broadly exhibited his work and his paintings are included in several private and corporate collections.

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