Alicia Boyle (1908 - 1997)

Moving Statues, Monkstown

Alicia Boyle was a 20th century artist known for her landscape and figure paintings. She was born on the 1st August 1908 in Bangkok, where her father worked with the British Dock Company. The following year, unable to cope with the climate in Bangkok, her father moved the family back home to Limavady, where Boyle spent her early years and first started to paint.

When she was 12 years old, the family were on the move again, this time to London. She enrolled on a teacher-training course at Clapham Art Training College, which allowed her to support herself while pursuing her interest in art. She subsequently attended the Byam Shaw School of Drawing and Painting where she won two scholarships.

For many years she taught part time in several schools while painting and exhibiting her work. In 1939, she received an invitation from the Greek Government to come to the School of Fine Art in Mykonos as a guest artist. In 1945 she had her first one-woman show in 1945 at the Peter Jones Gallery in London. She continued to keep strong links with the country of her youth, returning often to paint and exhibit in Northern Ireland.

She often showed her work with CEMA (the forerunner to the Arts Council) and in 1962 won its open painting competition. She moved back to Ireland in 1971, settling first in Bantry and then Dublin. Boyle's output was extremely wide ranging, from prints and quill drawings to murals and even set design. However, she is perhaps best known for her abstract figurative and landscape paintings, which were inspired by her fascination with Irish mythology.

This abstract landscape, Moving Statues, Monkstown, is in the collection of the Northern Ireland Civil Service.