Stephen Doyle (b. 1994)
Stephen Doyle is a Cork-based artist who graduated from the Crawford College of Art and Design in 2017. They were awarded Student of the Year Award in their graduating year and went on to receive two international art prizes the Ashurst Emerging Artist Prize and the Sunny Art Prize.
The artist explores issues of queer identity through the relationship between figuration and the politics of representation. They make portraits of LGBTQIA+ people, depicting subjects within everyday settings in a naturalistic manner. In 2018, they were shortlisted for the Zurich Portrait Prize with an artwork that was later acquired by the Crawford Art Gallery making it the first piece in the National Collection to discuss transgender/queer identity.
They have had multiple solo exhibitions in Cork, Dublin, and London and residencies with Backwater Artist Studios, Harmony Art Gallery, and the Butler Gallery. In 2020, they were awarded a Visual Art Bursary Award by the Arts Council of Ireland and were included in the Art History syllabus for the Leaving Cert examination.