| John Lawrence Doyle | ||
| Birth Date: March 14, 1939 |
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| Death Date: March 15, 2010 Artist Gallery |
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| John Lawrence Doyle was born on 1939 in Chicago. He came from a working class background. His father was John W. Doyle and made his living, as an officer of the Chicago Fire Department and Cecelia, Doyle’s mother, was a Chicago factory worker. His religious background was Chicago Irish Catholic, which he states is a thing of its own.
Doyle said: "I’ve always been interested in art, dating from preschool scribbles on a blackboard my father made." Throughout the years his interest in art continued, from high school to college where he attended the School of Art Institute of Chicago earning his BA. One of his favorite subject matters is of an ethnic, intercultural, mythological and historical nature. He has favored printmaking, in particular, lithography as a medium; the challenge of the exacting technical demands is what interests him most.
Major influences for Doyle fall into two groups: intellectual and aesthetic. Intellectual range from cultural and anthropological nature; myths, legends, histories of a people while aesthetic influences are more eclectic and range from Lautrec, Daumier and Folk Art (Native American, Aztec, African, etc).
The “Sharpshooters” series was created for the American Bicentennial. “I wanted to do something that people at the time didn’t particularly want to deal with. War. Particularly, coming so close to the end of the Vietnam era. Folks just sort of wanted to forget it. I also wanted to show that the history of this country is a rather bloody affair. A war every twenty years or so. Courageous no doubt, but dehumanizing none the less. This dehumanizing process is what I hoped to show through the Evolution of the wars. From the somewhat gentlemanly conducted affair of the Revolution to the dehumanized slaughter of Vietnam."
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