Artist Thomas Doyle has created miniature sets for photographs in periodicals like the New York Times and cover art for novels. However, his craft is not just for photographs.
Doyle creates miniatures on 1/43 scale and smaller. His work has been shown at Musée des beaux-arts Eugène Leroy in France, Roq la Rue Gallery in Seattle and, most recently, at the Grunwald Gallery of Art as part of “The Miniature,” a series including a variety of artists who practice in miniature.
Doyle delivered a lecture at the Henry Radford Hope School of Fine Arts on Sept. 4. He showed a slideshow of his pieces along with stories about creation and
inspiration.
Betsy Stirratt, gallery director for the Grunwald, introduced Doyle by reading from his biography.
“Tonight we’re fortunate enough to have Thomas Doyle, whose work combines his formal training with a fascination for scale models, which began at an early age,” Stirratt said. “His sculptures often depict human figures offset by calamities, often of the natural kind.”
Doyle addressed early on the connections between his childhood interests and his present work, as people often ask first what he does and how before venturing into his motivation.
“The ‘why’ is often the third question I get, and the ‘why’ is basically because I was a child, and I probably didn’t grow up,” Doyle said.
Doyle said one pivotal experience was the discovery during his childhood that he could use other materials to create a world for his favorite scale-model figures.
Now, Doyle said he creates miniature situations that represent domesticity and oblivion to danger.
Each part of the lecture focused on a particular
series of sculptures.
One series, called “Distillation,” often places characters in some sort of peril that they have very little
awareness of.
Another series called “Proxy” focuses on the armed forces and the domestic side of struggle associated with the choice
to fight.
The next demonstrations in “The Miniature” series will be artists Althea Crome and William R. Robertson at noon Friday, Sept. 11.
