Arthur Dooley (1929-1994)
Warrior
Initialled and dated (19)73, bronze, 66cm high

Arthur Dooley was a self-taught artist from Liverpool. He left school at 14 and worked on Mersey tugboats and apprenticed at Cammell Laird’s shipyard. When looking back in 1994, Dooley said to the author Peter Davies ‘The shipyard was really my art school’.

In 1945 he enlisted into the Irish Guards as bagpiper and rose to the rank of Sergeant. However, he left without leave to join the Palestine Liberation Organisation, where he served as a Colonel. When he was captured, Dooley was sent to a military prison, and it was here that he started to experiment with sculpture, it was also during this period he became a devout Catholic and staunch communist.

After Dooley left the army in 1953, he worked as a janitor and observed students at St. Martins School of Art in London. He developed his sculptural style from working with discarded material, particularly scrap metal, and was informed by his industrial experiences working at the docks. In 1961 Dooley exhibited his works at his first one man show at St. Martins. He then returned to Liverpool where he learned more about the metal casting process whilst working for Dunlop’s in Speke as a rubber moulder and created sculptures such as "Warrior".

This patinated bronze sculpture depicts an elongated figure with a featureless face, wearing a cloak and helmet. The figure’s feet are planted in a strong stance on a textured rectangular base and brandishes a round shield with textured embellishment and a spear. This ‘Warrior´ is a recurring theme in Dooley’s oeuvre, with various versions created since 1966 with differing bases and heights, sometimes under the title ‘Centurion.’

Dooley continued to exhibit around the UK, work on commissions such as the 1974 ‘Four Lads who Shook the World,’ Beatles Memorial in Liverpool, and campaigned on TV and in his home city for redevelopment, abolition of high-rise housing and better care for the unemployed. In the (19)90s, he founded a workshop for unemployed people and helped found the Liverpool Academy of Arts.