A framed Capital Times illustration by Rosa Doyle will be given to ex-Prime Minister Helen Clark this week.
The image of former Wellington Central MP and Prime Minister Peter Fraser created for our OK, Clever Dick… quiz (see pg 17) will be presented to Clark at the second annual Peter Fraser Memorial Lecture on Thursday. A second print will be given to current Wellington Central MP Grant Robertson, and later auctioned for charity.
“I’m really flattered,” says Doyle. “It shows that people are looking at my work [and reading Capital Times] which is the main thing.”
The week that the image was published in Capital Times, 23 year old Doyle received a call from the chair of the Labour Party.
“She asked me about my [creative] process and whether it was digital or original.”
Doyle, who has just completed her design degree, creates the works on her laptop and sells the prints between $60 and $200.
For the past six weeks she has collaborated on the weekly quiz with her father – who also writes our According to Doyle column – and hopes the job will help her build her freelance illustrator career.
“Martin does the research and decides what the topics [of the quiz] will be and then I research the person and come up with an illustration.”
Although she didn’t know much about Fraser before creating the pieces, Doyle says it was interesting to find out that he was originally from Scotland and to watch a video of him on Youtube.
The annual Peter Fraser Memorial Lecture will mark Doyle’s third meeting with Ms Clark – once at a wedding, and a second time at the movies.
“I met her at the premier of The Lord of the Rings,” she laughs. “There’s a photo of me shaking her hand.  My friend and I were just part of the audience.”