Artist Lucy Doyle: ‘You need time and space to develop your craft before results happen’
Popular colourist and contemporary painter Lucy Doyle talks about the ways in which themes and experiences present themselves in her art, the importance of structure and discipline, and the drama of flower painting.
Lucy has been painting and exhibiting from her studio in Co. Wicklow since graduating from Sheffield Art College in 1982, continually evolving and developing her unique figurative oil painting style.
Lucy’s subject matter is predominately still life and interiors, often incorporating figurative elements within this genre. She has a more expressive rather than local use of colour, and uses this to charge her work with emotion and energy. Her experimental and explorative use of colour constantly challenges and engages the viewer to participate fully when reading her paintings.
Her continued use of observed painting from life provides the viewer with further intricacies and complexities that lifts her work onto another level of picture making and visual engagement. Lucy creates her lively paintings using a palette knife, this enables her to maximise the full intensity of the colour and texture of oil paint, often mixing and merging her colours on the canvas as she works, wet on wet.
The Doorway Gallery is currently exhibiting a solo show of Lucy’s recent work, including her Home collection and the more recent Woven collection.
Was a career as an artist something you always aspired to?
Yes, I knew from a very early age that spending time creating colourful imaginative pictures was something that felt so right and natural. I loved doing it and I got a positive reaction when I produced something, so as a child, I was encouraged by this. I knew about artists at an early age as both my parents, especially my dad, had a fascination in this area. My dad always drew witty cartoons and illustrated his life in a small but enduring way. I remember being really very young and getting particularly frustrated when I couldn’t draw something and my dad saying that an artist named Van Gogh got so frustrated that he cut his own ear off! Maybe I was born with an innate sense of the ridiculous as it didn’t seem to worry me, in fact it made me think that maybe all of what my parents said was not always true.
What is your process when creating a new work? How do certain themes and experiences feed into or present themselves in your art?
This is a very pertinent question as my current body of work is called Woven and this describes my philosophy on how I have developed my subject matter. When devising a painting, I let ideas fuse in from all areas of my life and filter through with no preconceptions until they collate together in my ‘painting brain’, which is the part of me that knows what will translate into paint and colour and what ideas will ‘settle in’ as a narrative. So it feels like weaving to me. Strands of ideas, feelings, atmospheres, images, past masterworks, textiles, ceramics, my garden flowers, characters in books, films, my daughters, family and pets, these are endless sources of inspirations that make up the tapestry of my paintings. Just simply because I am living and being.
Tell us about your solo exhibition in five years at The Doorway Gallery.
Well I have a solo show every 1-2 years, I have been very consistent with this as the structure and discipline is so essential for me as a self-employed artist. The Doorway Gallery represents me and I have been with them for many years. We even carried on throughout the Covid years, through online interviews and online curated shows. My last collection of paintings was called Home, which represented my work from 2024 and the first few months of 2025. I put together a catalogue with each collection/solo show and make it available on my website to download online for free. So I have quite a collection of them spanning my art career to date. This show opened on October 2 and runs until October 17, representing my very recent work from Woven and also paintings from my Home collection.
What are some of your favourite subjects, or specific pieces that you’ve created?
Well I love to be inspired by the flowers in my garden, and I have a designated plot just above my studio where I will grow flowers for cutting and bringing into my studio to paint. So there is always something to work from, whether it’s daffodils in early spring or the flamboyant dahlias that go on flowering until the first frosts hit in late autumn. I have painted two large floral paintings that will be on show now at The Doorway Gallery, Spring Celebration, which is 120×100 cm oil on canvas and Summer Celebration, which is even larger at 152×122 cm of a massive vase of summer blooms against a deep ultramarine blue background. The drama of flower painting!
Who is someone you look up to in the realm of Irish art?
Basil Blackshaw for his incredible impactful use of colour. Daniel O’Neill for his strong female figures and delicious use of paint. Pauline Bewick for her beautiful visual narrative and authenticity. Mary Swansy for her mastery and again authentic voice that keeps echoing over the years as her work refuses to be kept down. And Camille Souter for her dedication to her painted vision.
What has been the highlight of your career so far?
Having Marian Keyes write me into one of her novels , The Brightest Star in the Sky. On page 356: “…thirty eight pairs of shoes, a Lucy Doyle painting and two hundred euro in the bank.” Completely out of the blue and just bowled me over. I still haven’t got over it.
What is one thing you wish everyone knew about working as an artist?
It’s a job not a hobby and has its own dynamic. You need time and space to develop your craft before results happen, so go easy on your artist friends and relations and have faith in their vocation.
What would you say to a budding artist unsure of their next steps?
There is no right way or wrong way, just your way, which makes for a very tenuous early part of starting out. So in the early days be kind to yourself and don’t expect to excel in every part of becoming an artist. There are so many component parts of the job that you have to master before it all comes together, so keep focussed knowing it will happen. See yourself as an apprentice to your craft and have a vision of where you want to be in the future, including what sort of paintings you envisage creating. Then, when something doesn’t feel right and true to you, discard and learn from it. Never compromise your style and keep slowly developing it, it’s the only way to achieve your own personal goal, before you level out. When you have your style, then you can start to express all that you are.
Lucy Doyle’s life in culture
The last thing I saw and loved… A video clip of my grandchildren, they are so sweet, they break my heart.
The book I keep coming back to… I found Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan Quartet about five years ago and never looked back. I found her voice so familiar and utterly believable. Even though she is writing about such a different culture from mine, her writing transported me effortlessly into her world.
I find inspiration in… My home, my family, my garden and my immediate surroundings.
My favourite film is… Well it’s the Pride and Prejudice BBC series from 1995 with Colin Firth as Mr. Darcy. I must have watched it twenty or more times over the years. Never fails to entertain and delight me.
My career highlight is… Donating a huge 152x185cm painting called Rose Red and Snow White to St. John’s Ward, Crumlin Children’s Hospital in Dublin and seeing it in the reception area. Such a good use of a painting where it can give some distraction and solace and time out in a helpful way.
The song I listen to get in the zone is… Kate Bush’s album Ariel. I have listened to it while painting so many times that I have to limit it to once every couple of months as it gets in my head space like a continuous tape that runs all throughout the day and night in a good, joyous way… but still there’s a time and place.
The last piece of art I recommended is… We are very lucky to have the National Gallery of Ireland in Dublin, their programme of curated shows has been a wonderful source of inspiration to me. Last year it was the Women Impressionists exhibition that marked the 150th anniversary of the impressionist exhibition held in Paris in 1874, that stood out for me. This show featured four important artists and the highlights were Berthe Morisot and Mary Cassatt’s paintings, which got my attention. I would recommend keeping an eye and ear out for their upcoming shows and in particular the Picasso: From the Studio opening running until February 2026.
I never leave the house without… My bag. I have always invested in a good bag as it’s always with me wherever I go. My bag at the moment is a Mulberry Bayswater which is large enough for all that I need: a hairbrush, dark glasses, some paracetamol, my purse, phone, a book, a notebook for sketches and the odd word I will jot down to while away the time say if I am waiting for an appointment or whatever. I could go on!
The work I still think about is… Bonnard’s Bowl of Milk which I have known and loved for years through art books, but saw it for real at the Tate Modern a good while ago. It was part of a mixed curated show so I wasn’t expecting to see it around a corner and I was so surprised and delighted. It was like meeting an old friend that you love and cherish and you haven’t seen for years and when you’re least expecting it. That feeling of love for that painting never wanes.
The best advice I’ve ever gotten… It was while I was reading an article on one of the Young British Artists Gary Hume in Vogue (I think) and the artist’s block he was experiencing until he thought of himself as a ‘Picture Maker’ rather than an ‘Artist’, with all the associated historical baggage and pressure that goes with that label. It’s the best antidote to feeling intimidated by living up to being an ‘artist’.
The art that means the most to me is… I have always had a special place in my heart for Mary Cassatt’s coloured etchings that she did between 1890-91, especially The Letter, which has been a source of inspiration for me since I was a student. There is a little book of these prints published by The National Gallery, Yale University Press.
The most challenging thing about being an artist is… Self belief. It’s a bit of a roller coaster until you produce enough of a body of work to buoy up your convictions and keep you on the course to where you set off for at the outset of your career.
If I wasn’t an artist, I would be… Very grumpy and impossible to live with.
The magic of art to me is… Being able to communicate in my medium is just a wonder to me. I feel very privileged to be part of what makes up this visual world that we live in. It’s such an essential part of what makes up a human being and always has been since the first cave paintings.
Lucy Doyle’s solo exhibition runs until October 17 at The Doorway Gallery, Rathfarnham, Dublin.
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