Stephen Doyle is a member of Backwater Artist Studios and graduate of Crawford College of Art and Design (2017). The artist is exploring issues of queer identity through the relationship between figuration and the politics of representation. Doyle makes figurative depictions of LGBTQIA+ people, and can include objects in the paintings, a gesture of ‘othering’ the art that mirrors the subject matter it investigates.

Painting, and portraiture in particular, is associated with the iconography of power (for example politicians and religious figures), and consequently with mainstream worldviews, of which queer identity and culture have always been excluded. By invoking them, Doyle makes an ironic comment on the subalternisation of the existence of the LGBTQIA+ community, and simultaneously does their part to illuminate it. Recently their work has incorporated subjects of adversity through community based projects and psychoanalytic approaches of traumatic events relative to growing up queer in Ireland. This is an attempt to create public discourse around shared struggles and too evoke a sense of solidarity amongst the queer community within a national narrative

Doyle is a member of Backwater Studios and graduate of Crawford College of Art and Design (2017). The recipient of two international art prizes 'Ashurst Emerging Artist Prize' & 'Sunny Art Prize'. Their work was acquired by Crawford Art Gallery twice over, the piece, ‘Dylan is ainm dom…’ is the first piece in the National Collection to openly discuss transgender/queer identity. Further to this they have had multiple solo exhibitions at Lavit Gallery (2018), SO Fine Art Editions (2018), Ashurst Emerging Artist Gallery (2019) Triskel Arts Centre (2020) Kilkenny Arts Festival (2022) to name a few. As well as being selected for prestigious group exhibitions such as the Zurich Portrait Prize, NGI (2018) Queer As You Are, Luan Gallery (2021) GENERATION 22 - New Irish Painting, Butler Gallery (2022) and The Trinity Buoy Wharf Drawing Prize, London (2022).

They have a solo exhibition, ‘A Fly’s Perspective of Loss’ at SO Fine Art Editions in April 2025 as well as a dual exhibition with Peter Bradley at the Highlanes Gallery in June of that same year.