Peter Doig
September 2004
Though born in Britain, Peter Doig's formative years were spent in Canada and it is to the landscape of this country that the artist returns time and time again in his work. The artist himself has acknowledged that there are not many themes in his work. He is attracted to 'quite basic genres of painting: figure and the landscape; building and the landscape' (1). The sinister aspect of Doig's landscapes has frequently been remarked upon usually in association with his painting Canoe-Lake (1997-1998) showing a figure (dead or alive), slumped on a canoe.
The painting uses as it's source a still from the horror movie Friday the Thirteenth. The artist has said in relation to his paintings, 'I'd love to think the paintings were like movies and that the viewer becomes the director of the movie ' (2). Doig's work possesses the anticipatory sense that anything might happen. The viewer is poised on the edge of a tension-fuelled moment of anticipation. In Ten Etchings, however, the scale is almost lost in the whiteness of the snow/paper or half-glimpsed through screens of trees. Ghostly abandoned buildings loom menacingly. Doig often reworks similar themes and images (often reversed) into his etchings: the drifter, or lone figure in the landscape recalling the similar protagonists found in the work of nineteenth-century German Romantic painter, Caspar David Friedrich; the eerie image of the Boiler House (1994), which used to power Le Courbusier's Unite d'Habitation also appears in one of the etchings. Doig has described his fascination for this building, lost in the middle of the woods, 'Because of the setting, it had become like a concrete hut in the woods. It will always look like it has been built by man- in this case, quite literally so, as it has almost got eyes and a mouth - but at some point it will become completely overgrown' (3).
Doig's images derive mainly from photographs, where the images are constantly shifting in and out of focus. He prefers the photographs to be bland, 'The photos I use aren't always that interesting or distinguished. That's deliberate - I like the fact that they're bland; they leave a lot of space for intervention. Painting is about working your way across the surface, getting lost in it. Sometimes I think - shall I have a bit more weather over here? A snowstorm?' (4)
Ten Etchings, produced in 1996 was Doig's first print portfolio. The following year the artist's second portfolio appeared, entitled grasshopper. In these prints the artist experimented with colour and presented a dramatic shift in scale by employing a much larger format.
Shortlisted for the turner Prize in 1994, Doig was appointed a trustee of the Tate a year later.
1. Anna Moszynska, Daytime Astronomy, Tate, no. 15, Summer 1998, p. 30
2. Interview with Adrian Searle, Peter Doig: Blotter (Contemporary Fine Arts, Berlin and Victoria Miro Gallery, London, 1995), no pagination
3. Moszynska, p. 32
4. Searle
The painting uses as it's source a still from the horror movie Friday the Thirteenth. The artist has said in relation to his paintings, 'I'd love to think the paintings were like movies and that the viewer becomes the director of the movie ' (2). Doig's work possesses the anticipatory sense that anything might happen. The viewer is poised on the edge of a tension-fuelled moment of anticipation. In Ten Etchings, however, the scale is almost lost in the whiteness of the snow/paper or half-glimpsed through screens of trees. Ghostly abandoned buildings loom menacingly. Doig often reworks similar themes and images (often reversed) into his etchings: the drifter, or lone figure in the landscape recalling the similar protagonists found in the work of nineteenth-century German Romantic painter, Caspar David Friedrich; the eerie image of the Boiler House (1994), which used to power Le Courbusier's Unite d'Habitation also appears in one of the etchings. Doig has described his fascination for this building, lost in the middle of the woods, 'Because of the setting, it had become like a concrete hut in the woods. It will always look like it has been built by man- in this case, quite literally so, as it has almost got eyes and a mouth - but at some point it will become completely overgrown' (3).
Doig's images derive mainly from photographs, where the images are constantly shifting in and out of focus. He prefers the photographs to be bland, 'The photos I use aren't always that interesting or distinguished. That's deliberate - I like the fact that they're bland; they leave a lot of space for intervention. Painting is about working your way across the surface, getting lost in it. Sometimes I think - shall I have a bit more weather over here? A snowstorm?' (4)
Ten Etchings, produced in 1996 was Doig's first print portfolio. The following year the artist's second portfolio appeared, entitled grasshopper. In these prints the artist experimented with colour and presented a dramatic shift in scale by employing a much larger format.
Shortlisted for the turner Prize in 1994, Doig was appointed a trustee of the Tate a year later.
1. Anna Moszynska, Daytime Astronomy, Tate, no. 15, Summer 1998, p. 30
2. Interview with Adrian Searle, Peter Doig: Blotter (Contemporary Fine Arts, Berlin and Victoria Miro Gallery, London, 1995), no pagination
3. Moszynska, p. 32
4. Searle
Jennifer Ramkalawon