Matt Coyle was born and grew up in Canberra. He studied art at the Sydney College of the Arts, during which time he contributed a weekly comic to the campus newsletter Honi Soit. This weekly comic precipitated his leaving university to work on his graphic novels, publishing Registry of Death in 1996 and Worry Doll in 2007.

Coyle has been drawing for 15 years, refining his image making to an almost photo-realist clarity while also honing his unique graphic style. His extremely detailed drawings are painstaking and very time-consuming to produce, taking up to 60 hours per work. Coyle exhibits both pen on paper works, and limited edition pigment prints of his originals.

Matt was recently commissioned by Art and Australia magazine to produce a series of drawings entitled The Shades.  They appeared in the Winter and Spring editions of 2009 and the Summer and Autumn editions of 2010.

Coyle’s work has been exhibited both nationally and internationally. During the Ten Days on the Island festival in 2009 his work was shown as Worry Doll@ Willow Court in New Norfolk. His work was included in the group show Horror, Come Darkness, Macquarie University Art Gallery, 2009;  Recent Acquisitions - Australian, International and Asian and Pacific Collections, Gallery of Modern Art, Queensland Art Gallery, 2008, and FINE at Sanderson Contemporary Art, Auckland 2007.He was a finalist in the Hutchins and the City of Hobart Art Prizes in 2009, and the Stan & Maureen Duke Gold Coast and Sunshine Coast Art Prizes in 2008.  In 2007, Worry Doll was awarded the best graphic novel/comic artist award by Rue Morgue magazine in Canada.

Coyle now lives and works in Hobart. For more information on his work, go to www.mattcoyle.net.

Matt Coyle’s CV