Joe Doyle, painter, printmaker, and multimedia Abstract Illusionist artist, was born in New York City on February 27, 1941. He studied at San Francisco State University and received his B.A. in 1969 and his M.F.A. in 1971. In an interview with Mark Levy for the winter 1982 issue of Art Voices magazine, Doyle stated that his interest in pursuing art began while serving in the Air Force in the mid 1960s. A sergeant who appreciated Doyle's realistic landscape painting relieved him of difficult assignments to allow him to focus on art. When Doyle turned to painting abstractions, the same sergeant assigned him to KP duty.

Doyle's style evolved from political photo-realism to a form of non-objective Op Art in the late 1970s which he and fellow artists James Harvard, Jack Reilly, and George Green referred to as Abstract Illusionism. This later evolved into his multi-media works that included digital manipulation. He was an instructor and co-founder of the Multi-Media Arts Department at Berkeley City College and was instrumental in establishing the Digital Arts Club, which was honored with a public proclamation by the mayor of Berkeley in 2010. Doyle taught there until 2019.

Doyle was included in Thomas Albright’s “Art in the San Francisco Bay Area, 1945-1980.” In 2007, he was included in the exhibition Abstract Illusionism: Taking the Realism out of Illusion at Colorado State University and his work was shown at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, The Oakland Museum of California, and the Yozo Ueda Gallery in Tokyo, Japan. Doyle also had solo exhibitions in galleries in Chicago, Dallas, Los Angeles, Oakland, Philadelphia, San Francisco, and San Jose.

Joe Doyle died in San Francisco, California on April 7, 2020.