Cliona Doyle

Cliona Doyle (born 1968) is an Irish printmaker whose career-long subject has been the botanical world of Ireland — flowering trees, fruit, garden specimens, and the wild flora of hedgerow and meadow — rendered through the disciplined intaglio techniques of copper-sulphate etching, aquatint, and carborundum. She is one of the most distinctive botanical print artists working in contemporary Europe and a long-standing member of Graphic Studio Dublin.

She was born in Dublin and studied fine art at the National College of Art and Design (NCAD) in Dublin, receiving an Honours degree in 1991. She joined Graphic Studio Dublin and served on the studio's Board of Directors from 2005 to 2009. She is represented in London by Long & Ryle and exhibits regularly through SO Fine Art Editions in Dublin.

Doyle's signature contribution to contemporary printmaking is her sustained use of copper sulphate (blue stone) as an environmentally non-toxic mordant in place of nitric or ferric acid. Working en plein air, she carries her copper plates and copper sulphate into the field and etches directly from the subject in situ — part of the broader move within European printmaking towards eco-friendly intaglio. She supplements this technique with carborundum (silicon-carbide grit applied as a resist) for tonal modelling, with aquatint for half-tone passages, and at times with chine collé and metal leaf.

Her subjects span the year-round botanical calendar of Ireland: flowering fruit trees (apple, pear — including Pear 'Louise Bonne' — and pomegranate), magnolias such as Magnolia Soulangeana, rhododendrons, garden iris and peony cultivars, orchids, and the wild flora of Irish hedgerow and meadow (hawthorn, bluebells, rowan, mountain avens, and wild rose). Her largest plates measure 100 × 121 cm and are most often issued in editions of fifty at the Graphic Studio Gallery, where her catalogue now runs to well over eighty works spanning two decades.

Doyle has exhibited at the National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin City Gallery The Hugh Lane, the Chester Beatty Library, the Royal Hibernian Academy, and the National Botanic Gardens, Glasnevin. Her work is held in Irish public and corporate collections including the Office of Public Works and Allied Irish Banks. She teaches etching and drawing workshops at Graphic Studio Dublin and is one of the studio's most consistently productive working members.

Within the small but internationally respected community of European botanical printmakers, Doyle is among the most distinctive — not only for the breadth of Irish flora she has documented, but for her commitment to copper-sulphate etching as an environmentally responsible alternative to traditional intaglio acid baths. Her practice represents one of the strongest sustained intersections in contemporary printmaking between botanical illustration, en-plein-air drawing, and large-format intaglio.