Katherine Doyle’s third story studio is strewn with strange objects, including a pair of medusa wigs. She has clothing, figurines, vintage furniture and other oddities, all under the high ceilings of her drafty work space in Portsmouth. It’s a collection of objects that could only find coherence on an artist’s canvas. But, despite the profusion of props, her studio is relatively empty these days. All the finished pieces have been scattered among seven exhibitions throughout the Seacoast, across the country and as far away as Italy.

On Nov. 2, Doyle attended the opening of “Accord VII” at the George Marshall Store Gallery in York, Maine. The following day, she had to miss the opening of the “Pastel Exhibition” at the Anderson Lake Gallery in Dover to attend the “Every Picture Tells a Story: Myths, Messages and Morals” opening at Southern New Hampshire University. All three shows featured Doyle’s work. A recent visit to her studio above The Green Monkey on Pleasant Street gave The Wire an opportunity to interrupt her busy schedule.     

Doyle depicts intimate moments of human experience, often instilling a dreamy quality. Although she is straightforward in her depiction of the human figure, her work gives the impression that something wistful is bubbling below the surface. Her painting has been credited with feminist qualities, but it is also visually appealing.

Doyle’s family moved around the world when she was growing up, living in places like Japan, Central Africa, West Africa and Belgium. When she was in her early teens, her father revealed that he was in the CIA, which explained their constant relocations to exotic places. Doyle returned to the United States for high school, and later went to college in Belgium. After two years, she returned to the States and finished school in Washington D.C. She did post graduate work in Italy, where she stayed for several years before moving to England, where she met her husband. In 1990, Doyle decided to settle in a summer house in Portsmouth.

“I’m in love with the light here and the look of the landscape,” she said.

Although Doyle’s career has taken a different path from her father’s, artistic talent trickled down through the family. The easel she uses first belonged to her grandmother, who bought it with money from a portrait she sold.

Growing up in different cultures allowed Doyle to experiment with the notion that people share a common human experience. “More my way of thinking than my way of working was influenced,” she said. She began to explore whether similar connections could be found between past and present civilizations. She found the Greek story of Persephone’s descent into the underworld, which seemed to resonate throughout human history, in a number of different periods and cultures.

“This story of a character’s descent, including the journey through a mysterious or frightening other world, what is learned or found there, and the eventual return home, is the subject of the earliest human texts and probably dates from long before the written word. I understand it to be the original story, which serves as a template for inner journeys into the subconscious or other states of mind,” she wrote in her artist’s statement for the SNHU show.

During a recent trip to New York City, Doyle was wandering in the gallery district late at night when she came across an open door. She figured it led to another gallery; but, inside, she discovered an underground nightclub. The club, Crobar, which no longer exists, resembled a catacomb, with 20 separate rooms on several different levels. It was an unexpected slip into an otherworldly place.

The experience came at a critical time in Doyle’s life. She had been struggling with a creative block for several years. The theme of an underworld had come up several times, but her ideas lacked focus. She used the experience of descending into the New York underground as a way of illustrating her modern take on an ancient story.

“The project began with my own need for ‘descent’ into the self, and transformation—it has progressed in step with my own alteration and has been instrumental in freeing myself from old patterns of thought and action. Working with this ‘descent’ story, trying to make the myth ‘real,’ seems to open up my creative process and my awareness of a buried inner life,” Doyle said.

The pastels she chose to display at the SNHU show depict the voluntary descent of a woman into the underworld. “Every image is a fractal of the whole myth,” she said. With strong, warm colors, Doyle shows how a woman loses her innocence by leaving the surface world after being seduced or abducted by a masculine force.

Doyle plans to create a sculpture for the SNHU show, which she thinks will resemble a totem pole. Students will be able to alter the sculpture by adding something or taking something away. She is eager to see what happens when a community “comes together with the express purpose of exploring transformation.” She is also considering planting “transformation poles” in different neighborhoods of Portsmouth to see what those communities do to them.

The series, which she has named “The Transformation Project,” would make a fascinating graphic novel, Doyle said. She has also been working with Michael Winters on a video sketch of the descent series.

In the past, Doyle has depended on models to create realist figures in her work, but lately, she has been “inventing” more. Part of her self-described transformation as an artist and a human being has involved shifting her focus from imagining human experiences to actually having those experiences and recording them through her work. “By working from models less, the experience is more direct,” she said. “It’s a combination of my life and the life of my subject. The picture was where we met. It’s more than just personal. Everything an artist makes is, in some ways, a self-portrait, because it arises from the self.”   

Whether Doyle considers herself a successful artist depends on the day. It also depends on the definition of success.
“You can consider it being known, being represented by certain galleries or making a living at it, but that could mean nothing to someone else,” she said.

Her own definition of success, like her work, is in transformation. Her participation in so many shows serves as evidence of her recognition. But, Doyle seems to care more about tapping into her inner creativity and sharing it with others. By keeping an accurate record of her own authentic experiences, she hopes to translate her art into an expression of common human experience.

The exhibition in the George Marshall Store Gallery, 140 Lindsay Road, York, Maine, 207-351-1083, will be up until Dec. 9. The show at Anderson Lake Gallery, 284 Central Ave., Dover, 603-750-7227, will be up until Nov. 30. The exhibit at SNHU’s McInich Art Gallery, first floor of Robert Frost Hall, 2500 N. River Road, Manchester, 603-629-4622, will run until Dec. 13.