Sam Doyle was born on St. Helena Island, off the South Carolina coast,
home of the slave offspring of the Gullah community, which speaks a unique Creole dialect and follows African traditions and customs. Due to his family's poverty, Doyle was forced to leave school at an early age and
start working. For twenty years he worked in odd jobs-porter, undertaker, laundry worker-until in the mid-1940s his wife left him and took their three children to New York, after which he began painting.

- The discovery -
Doyle used to hang his paintings on the fence of his home, so passersby could see and even purchase them. He called this display the "St. Helena Outdoor Art Gallery." His works attracted visitors from all over the United States, especially after they were presented in the groundbreaking exhibition "Black Folk Art in America, 1930-1980" curated by Jane Livingston and John Beardsley at Corcoran Gallery, Washington in 1982. For the occasion he left St. Helena Island for the f irst time, but soon returned.

- The work -
Doyle worked with inexpensive found materials. He painted mainly using
house paint on scrap sheet metal, wooden panels, or window frames. In the 1960s he devoted himself to art, focusing on African-American culture, and specif ically on the community of the Gullah slave descendants. His paintings ref lect a black folk culture, and his black heroes are singers and musicians (e.g. Ray Charles), boxers, baseball and basketball players, as well as voodoo doctors and other practitioners of black magic, nourished by beliefs and knowledge passed orally in the community from one generation to the next.