Thomas Doyle

In my youth, I always wondered what it would be like to be God; to be omniscient and to have a bird’s eye view of all that is around me - a snow globe of sorts. After all, the earth is spherical and rotates all day long… It would certainly be most amusing to sit back and watch the cycle of life rolling along its course, would it not? In a sense, Thomas Doyle’s work fulfills that childhood curiosity of mine. He offers slices of life, glimpses of what God would see if he was really observing us all. I no longer believe in God, but still, I would like to watch the globe spin and the seasons pass…

“I am inspired by absurdity and bizarre behavior; the kind of real-life situations that push reality to its breaking point. My work generally depicts those kind of scenes, but takes them further, until the point that they are straddling reality and surreality – but landing with the latter. I am interested in the idea of wonder, especially as it relates to finding beauty in what is often pretty dark human material… [My work has] allowed me to draw upon the fantasies I had as a child – houses floating, people flying through the air – and call them into form in a way I never could have as a child. I’m very happy to be able to do that.”

“Though most of my works don’t originate in a concrete event, the piece “Escalation,” with its man standing before a pile of household goods with a gasoline can, is tied very closely to reality. One of my father’s fellow factory workers, on the outs with his wife, once dragged everything from the house into their suburban yard, hacked it apart with an axe, and set it aflame. I heard that story as a boy, and I never forgot it.”

Text and images kindly permitted to be republished on this blog by the artist himself. Please visit his website to view more of his work.