Artist Profile: Peter Doig
Let’s take a pause and go back to our nomadic roots. Back to a time of no permanent residence, continuously drifting along and taking in the world and its surroundings. Through constant movement, we pick up experiences that inspire, encourage, and stimulate us and we use them for life’s creative processes.
This constant movement is portrayed in the work of Peter Doig, his nomadic lifestyle being a strong influence of his art. Doig’s life work portrays and honors the memories of the different places he has lived in, like the U.K., Trinidad, and Canada. While he was living in London, he would paint landscapes from his Canadian youth and childhood trips to Trinidad. Then London appeared in his artwork while he was living in Montreal again.
Doig’s uncommon approach to his craft sets him apart from many artists. He uniquely uses his skills to draw from photographs and magazine clippings to aid his memory and not from what he’s directly observing. Doing so provides an outlet where Doig can combine his personal recollections with his artistic life.
Being born in Edinburgh, Scotland in 1959, Doig moved to tropical Trinidad at the age of three and then Canada four years later due to his father’s shipping and trading company job. His movement to London in 1979 to study art is what officially kick-started his career.
A recent college graduate. The responsibilities of adult life hitting you at full force now. A taste of the past, memories from your childhood could be the best remedy right now. Doig’s Pink Snow (1991) evokes memories from his time in Canada extracted soon after he graduated from the Chelsea School of Art in London.
At first glance, the painting overtakes you with its pink tones so much so that it requires several glimpses to notice the man standing to the left. The snow, falling softly on the ground and gently hugging the roof of the house, embellishes the canvas while simultaneously hindering the viewer’s ability to fully view the scene. However, Doig intended for this to be the impression. When reflecting on this piece, he says that “you are constantly looking through things, seeing the foreground and the background at the same time.” With this effect, the focus is centered on the snow and the differing objects of the piece at the same time.
A shift occurred in Doig’s artwork when he returned to one of his childhood countries of Trinidad. The country’s sunny and radiant island climate creates vibrant sceneries and warm lights and colors that have been present in Doig’s Trinidadian paintings.
Lone figures are a persistent motif in Doig’s work. We see this in Pink Snow and also in his 2004 work Lapeyrouse Wall. However, the Trinidadian painting that was created in the same place as its setting signifies a shift where Doig doesn’t just paint about old environments, but also current ones.
Accompanied only by his shadow, the man in the painting strolls down a seemingly splotchy wall under the cover of his pink umbrella.
Studying the title of the painting, the viewer comes to find out that the wall holds more significance than previously thought. MoMA writes that the “Lapeyrouse Cemetery is an eighteenth-century burial ground in Port of Spain, named after the settler who established the first sugar estate on the island.” An indication of Britain’s past control of this island, the wall can also symbolize Doig’s own life: born in the U.K. and living in Trinidad to have the country become a muse for his art.
Continuing the themes of solitary figures and momentous walls, Doig paints House of Flowers (see you there) (2007–2009). The nebulous body, moving along the stack of black bricks and yellow masonry, moves as if in thought, with a slouched back and hands on hips. The pink flower petals from the tree towering the body cover its torso as they fall down. The cement path that the murky frame walks on has the words “see you there” painted by Doig. These words signify the StudioFilmClub, his weekly program that brings international film to his residence of Port of Spain, Trinidad.
Doig has reflected that “I think my paintings, certainly are filmic.” And indeed, the paintings discussed here look like scenes from a movie. Doig uses film as an interpretive frame for his work, explaining that “the pictures might be films and the viewer could become the director of the film,” using their own interpretations to understand the paintings.
There is a return here to Doig’s nomadic lifestyle. His transnational experience allows for unique depictions of the places he holds close to his heart. “All of the paintings have an element of autobiography in them,” Doig says. By approaching his work through non-direct observance, the paintings become fluid; Doig isn’t tied down to a concept but instead lets his memories guide him to allow the painting to become what it was meant to be.
In a career that is now spanning three decades, Peter Doig has established himself as a successful contemporary artist. His craft, where memory becomes paint, can’t be reduced and restricted, circling back to his constant transnational movement.
