KT Doyle | KT Doyle | Australian Contemporary Artist

“I am an artist.

My work begins with a story, an image, a place, an encounter or an experience. Sometimes I understand why it has caught my attention. Sometimes I don't.

Across almost four decades, I have worked through pattern, colour, photography, print, textiles, installation, public art and, increasingly, writing.

I am interested in how we construct meaning from what we see, remember, imagine and believe—and what becomes visible when those constructions begin to shift.”

—KT Doyle

Selected Projects

The Invitation

Collected Patterns

Stitched Together

Briggs’ Lanterns

Featured Artwork

The Tortellino

$500.00

Limited edition archival giclée print

Some works are planned. Others quietly find their way into the world.

The Tortellino was created following two months living alone in Italy—first in Florence, then during an artist residency in Assisi.

One morning in Assisi, while I was sweeping the street outside the residency studio, a local woman took me by the arm and invited me to join a pasta-making class at her family’s nearby language school.

“The sweeping can wait,” she said. “Come with me. It’s starting now.”

So I went.

The tortellino in this work became the trace of that invitation accepted. I placed it upon the weathered surface of a lichen-covered wall photographed during solitary evening walks in the hills above Florence, bringing together two places and two very different moments from my time in Italy.

For me, The Tortellino is about the small invitations that appear unexpectedly in a life—and what can happen when we choose to say yes.

Perhaps it will remind you of one of your own.

The Edition

Released in an edition of just ten, The Tortellino is digitally printed on Hahnemühle 100% cotton rag paper using Epson archival pigment inks.

Each print is signed, titled and individually numbered on the reverse, carefully wrapped in acid-free tissue and accompanied by a certificate detailing the artwork and its place within the edition.

The print is designed to fit a standard A3 frame, making framing straightforward. It is sold unframed and ships worldwide in a secure protective tube.

Edition: 10

Paper size: 420 × 297 mm (A3)

Paper: Hahnemühle 100% cotton rag

Printing: Epson archival pigment inks

Signed: Signed, titled and numbered on reverse

Certificate: Certificate included

Framing: Unframed; fits a standard A3 frame

Shipping: Worldwide

Tobacco

$165.00

Limited edition letterpress print

Plants carry stories.

When I began researching Walter Hill, Brisbane’s first colonial botanist, I found myself looking at the plants he introduced and cultivated not simply as botanical specimens, but as traces of another time.

Hill was testing what might grow in the unfamiliar soil and climate of a young colony. Some plants promised food. Others medicine. Some could feed livestock. And some were valued for what they might produce economically.

Tobacco was one of those plants.

Hill imported varieties of tobacco, sugar cane and tea to test their suitability for Queensland conditions. Looking through original botanical illustrations held in the State Library of Queensland, I became fascinated by the tobacco leaf itself—its elongated, curling form and the possibilities it held once removed from the conventions of botanical illustration.

I began drawing.

As the leaves were extracted, repeated and reorganised, the plant slowly became something else. The resulting pattern felt almost tattoo-like: botanical, but no longer simply descriptive.

There was another connection to the past I wanted to preserve. I printed Tobacco on an original Heidelberg Windmill letterpress, allowing a contemporary pattern to come into being through the physical impression of a traditional printing process.

A plant once cultivated for its economic value had become the starting point for something entirely different.

Plant became pattern. History became image.

The Edition

Released in an edition of just ten, Tobacco is letterpress printed on Magnani Incisioni 650/5 Smooth White 100% cotton rag paper using rubber-based inks.

Each print is signed, titled and individually numbered on the front, wrapped in acid-free tissue and presented in a custom protective envelope. It is accompanied by information detailing the artwork, the Collected Patterns series and its place within the edition.

The print is sold unframed and ships worldwide in a rigid protective envelope.

Edition: 10

Paper size: 300 × 260 mm

Paper: Magnani Incisioni 650/5 Smooth White, 100% cotton rag

Printing: Letterpress with rubber-based inks

Press: Heidelberg Windmill

Signed: Signed, titled and numbered on front

Framing: Unframed