TitleKnocknarea #1 (Study for Knocknarea)
Artist
Tom Doyle
(American, 1928 - 2016)
Date1998
MediumBronze, cast from wood
DimensionsOverall: 13 × 13 × 23 in., 75lb.
SubmissionNA diploma presentation, December 13, 2000
Credit LineNational Academy of Design, New York, NY
Object number2000.18
Label TextTom Doyle was born in Jerry City, Ohio and studied art first at Miami University, Ohio before completing his B.A. and M.F.A. at Ohio State University. Doyle began his artistic career as a carver of wood, but by the time he finished his formal education in the late 1950s he had reversed his procedure and began constructing his work out of found wooden pieces. The artist noted: "I had been opening mass to space. Now I wanted form to reach into space. I went from carving to constructing." Doyle emerged in the early 1960s with his first New York exhibition at Allan Stone Gallery in 1961. During the decade, Doyle began working with a variety of materials including bluestone, and the smooth surfaces of Masonite, steel, linoleum, fiberglass, and finished wood. By the early 1990s Doyle's work was often composed of abstract pieces of carved timbers that fit together to create monumental tension-filled works that seem to balance precariously in space.Doyle conceives of his work in terms of place instead of as purely physical objects. The artist's titles are often taken from various locales or refer to history or myths. In this instance, Knocknarea (the place) is a tumulus atop a mountain in County Sligo, Ireland, and is the legendary burial site of Queen Maeve, the warrior queen in Celtic mythology and Doyle has imbued his sculpture with a similar enigmatic dimension. The artist often creates studies for his full-scale works and "Knocknarea #1" is the study for a large-scale sculpture that occupied the lobby of his Kouros Gallery exhibition in 1999. The full-size version, "Knocknarea," is now in a private collection in Madison, CT. Like many of his smaller bronze works, "Knocknarea #1" was created originally in wood and then cast in bronze using the burn-out method, leaving the impression of the wood grain in the bronze.
