Well into this century, the Sea Islands on the coast of South Carolina remained an isolated enclave inhabited by the descendants of slaves. The residents spoke their own West African—inflected language, called Gullah, and carried on cultural traditions with strong African elements. Sam Doyle was born and spent his entire life on one of the islands, St. Helena, near a hamlet named Frogmore. He created a diverse and colorful gallery of local characters - real, like his cousin, the island’s first black midwife, and imagined, like the ghost “Whooping Boy” --scenes from the island history, and legendary events, such as Abraham Lincoln’s mythical visit to the island. 

Doyle was one of nine children born to farming parents. His teachers at the island’s Penn School, established by northern philanthropists, noticed his artistic abilities before he was a teenager, and one even invited him to go north to New York to study art. Instead, he was forced to go to work after ninth grade at a variety of jobs, first as a stock clerk, then for twenty years as a porter in a warehouse, and finally, from 1950 to 1967, in the laundry of the nearby Parris Island Marine Corps base. Doyle also acted as caretaker for the Chapel of Ease, a noted ruin in Frogmore. 

In the mid-1940s Doyle's wife and their three children left him to move to New York, and Doyle began to paint.  He used what was plentiful and accessible- roofing tin and enamel house paint.  From the beginning, Doyle's work was like a public conversation, a form of storytelling, and he often hung his paintings outside his house for localresidents to see and buy of they chose.  One of the few times Doyle ever left the island was for the landmark Washington, D.C. exhibition "Black Folk Art in America."  When he arrived, Doyle wanted only one thing- to return to St. Helens as quickly as he could.