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He is one of the biggest names on the international art scene The Herald

Peter Doig A timeline

B uy y our t ic k et s

1959 Born in Edinburgh

1960 Moves with his family to Trinidad
1966 Moves with his family to Canada
1979 Moves to London
1979-83 Studies at the Wimbledon School of Art and the Saint Martins School of Art
1986 Moves to Montreal

Guided Tours

1989 Moves to London, studies at the Chelsea School of Art

1991 Wins the Whitechapel Artist Award, London
1994 Is nominated for the Turner Prize
1996-97 Takes part in the exhibition About Vision: New British Painting in the 1990s, United Kingdom
2001 Exhibition at the Morris and Helen Balkin Gallery, Vancouver, and at the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa

Latest News

2002 Moves to Trinidad

2004 Takes part in the Carnegie International, Pittsburgh

Peter Doig: A brief

2007 Takes part in the exhibition The Painting of Modern Life, Hayward Gallery, London, and Castello di Rivoli, Turin

portrait by Stphane

2008 Retrospective at the Tate Britain, London, the Muse dart moderne de la Ville de Paris and the Schirn Kunsthalle, Frankfurt

Aquin

2009 Peter Doig and Stephen Hough, collaboration at Westminster Cathedral, London

Stphane Aquin, Curator of

Contemporary..

100 years ago: Peter

An interview with Peter Doig

Doigs influences
100 years ago is a sort of
manifesto pai..

Peter Doig decided to settle in Trinidad during an artist residency there in 2000, which gave him the opportunity to rediscover the island
where he had spent his early childhood before moving to Quebec with his family. His painting reflects this new life in the tropics, as
can be seen in the following excerpts from Scottish art critic Angus Cooks interview with the artist.

Peter Doig: The Hockey Game

During his visit to Montreal for the pre..

Peter Doig : Les

chemins de la peinture
(FR)
Peter Doig: Les chemins de
la pei..

In Conversation with
Peter Doig and
Stphane Aquin
The curator of contemporary
art Stphane..

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Angus Cook: Many of your landscapes relate to Canada and

A. C.: Maybe yours are all a self-portrait. Do you think of the

Trinidad

landscapes as a metaphor for whats going on inside your

Peter Doig: I think Trinidad affected the paintings that I was

head, and your inner life?

working on prior to moving there in 2002. I had gone there for

P. D.: I think thats probably what I do. Its a good way of

about a month in 2000, after I was invited out of the blue to do a

thinking about making a painting. In a way, you have to own an

residency there. I didnt really know what to expect when I

image in your head, as well as own it on the canvas, as it were,

arrived,

before it becomes in any way believable.

and

was

pleasantly

surprised

by

how

much

remembered.
A. C.: So painting is not just done with the eye and the hand,
A. C.: Like what?

theres a lot of brainwork involved too.

P. D.: I remembered the architecture. I could remember smells. I

P. D.: I never really understood what was so conceptual about

could remember roads, and routes. Its a potent place visually,

conceptual

just the experience of it, even at a young age, and I realised I

conceptual. I mean, every painting is an idea. Every painting is

had always felt very fond of this place, very connected to it even

the result of a process. Conceptual art just removes the

though I hadnt been back in 33 years. I remembered just how

pleasures of looking colour and beauty, things like that.

sort of welcoming the people were, there would always be

art,

anyway

all

painting,

pretty

much,

is

something to talk about, a rapport. So just after being in

A. C.: Over the past decade you seem to be moving into

Trinidad, I came back to London and I finished a number of

more mystical territory. It partly derives from a certain

paintings that Id started, which became more decorative in one

choice of subject-matter pictures of saints, gurus, mystics,

way, and more open in another way the Hundred Years Ago

supernatural-seeming events. But it is also a product of the

painting for instance. I mean, Id already played around with that

indeterminate, symbolist-y, or even abstract look to some of

imagery but I didnt really know what to do with it, really. And I

the paintings Is this a reflection of a religious awakening

think seeing the ocean, being on an island and seeing these

within you or an adjustment of emphasis, in aesthetic terms?

islands around the island and the experience of it all kind of in a

P. D.: Its more a questioning of everyday spirituality, thinking

way opened things up, made the paintings a bit more expansive

about that, and not to do with any specific beliefs. I mean, my

in some ways.

hope is kind of that my work becomes even more abstract,

really. It doesnt have to always have such a direct reference to

A. C.: So its been more of an unconscious evolution in your

the everyday or to objects. Recognizable objects. But I think

art, rather than an intentional change. But when youre

thats something thats gonna happen. I dont want to reinvent

working on a new painting, you must be sometimes thinking

myself as a kind of abstract artist and just reduce my paintings

about how the thing you are working on stands in relation to

to the elemental. I think some paintings have found themselves

your total body of work and how it might change it?

going in that direction more obviously than others. But I think its

P. D.: To some extent, but its also difficult because in some

got to be something that I feel I can come to terms with it within

ways an artist is only ever capable of painting one painting,

myself. Even when Guston was supposedly no longer an

again and again, in a single lifetime.

abstract artist, his paintings were probably more abstract than

ever, really.

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