Martin Coyle is an emerging artist based in London but with the backdrop of his native West Donegal as the inspiration for his work to date. Drawing on the modern emigrant pull of working in London yet yearning for his native soil and its people, Martin is a kitchen table artist, based in his North London house, but home is deeper in the hills, rivers, lakes, sea, fields, and the people of the three parishes of Cloughaneely, Gweedore and the Rosses where most, but not all of his work has been about, to date.
A proud son of Cloughaneely, Martin, like many from the area, emigrated to London. In his case in the 1980s, where he married and has two sons, Oisin and Ethan, now men of their own right. Respectful of the opportunity that London and the UK has given him, Martin works as an all-round man of the tools, maintaining and repairing in the property sector in the City by the Thames. It is, as the evening shadows fall, and especially on the winter nights, that Martin lifts the brush and combines pictures emanating on Social Media and images from Donegal that he draws his thoughts, creativity, and imagination as he transfers the powerful combination of wishing to be there in Donegal with the joy that those posting the photos are getting from walking, swimming, rambling, or simply seeing images in his own head of a field, an old ruin, a gate, birds and other powerful yet simple scenes.
This is a Donegal man living and working in London content with life yet conflicted by the desire to bring the beauty of his County into his every day. This complex conflict, the ingredient for many an artist, has created the emerging artist that is Martin Coyle. The Why behind his art is as important as the how or the what that he produces. In itself that is the art.