PETER DOIG

 Peter Doig was born in Edinburgh, Scotland in 1959, but then moved to Trinidad with his family in 1962. After four years in Trinidad, his family moved to Canada in 1966. Canada was where Doig discovered his interest in art. He was seventeen and working for a gas drilling crew in the Canadian countryside when he decided he needed to pursue an interest so that he would not be drilling the rest of his life. During his free time Doig started to draw pictures of landscapes. From 1979 through 1983, Doig studied art in London at Wimbledon and St. Martin's, then in 1989 he attended the Chelsea School of Art to gain his master's degree.  

 Blotter, Peter Doig, Oil on Canvas, 98 x 78 " 1993

Doig primarily paints landscapes, some of which contain figural subjects. Working a lot using photographs as references, Doig uses both his own and found images. Inspired by artists such as Munch, Monet, and Klimt, Doig presents his paintings as “the actuality of the scene blended with the visions in his head” trying to relay how our society fits into the more natural world.

One of Doig's most famous group of paintings are of architect Le Corbusier's post World War II apartment structure, Unité d'Habitation,  tucked away behind thick foliage. The modern architecture surrounded by an encroaching nature captivated Doig who would walk around the subject sites and film his trek on a video camera to later view video stills as reference for his paintings. This process allows for more variable and sense of an experience than taking a single photograph and referencing it.

 Concrete Cabin West Side, Peter Doig, Oil on Canvas, 106 x 79 ", 1993

Doig does not work on paintings with the mindset that they will be a part of a series, instead he paints them as one-offs and sometimes is able to find links between them that allow them to work as a series. For example, his Le Corbusier paintings were done over eight years time between 1991 and 1998.

Doig presently resides in Trinidad where he has a studio in Port of Spain and draws influence from the Caribbean carnival practices. He also teaches as a professor at Düsseldorf State Academy of Art and has exhibited extensively in solo and group exhibitions. 

I am drawn to Doig's works because of their visual sense of a chaotic calm. His representations of nature are energized and often overwhelming. However, the man-made structures he portrays present order to contrast with nature and provide a visualization of how we as humans have partly succeeded in separating ourselves from the chaos of time and the natural world. His color palettes are congruent with his ever-present use of contrast. Doig blends highly saturated color with more drab tints, tones, and shades relevant to his color scheme to create a coherent tension with design elements. Doig's energetic use of line and mark making creates movement within his paintings that give them life and convey the “odd couple” relationship that modern society shares with nature. 

Okahumkee (Some Other People's Blues), Peter Doig, Oil on Canvas, 79.92 x 94.49 ", 1990