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

Peter Doig – A timeline1959 – Born in Edinburgh1960 – Moves with his family to Trinidad1966 – Moves with his family to Canada1979 – Moves to London1979-83 – Studies at the Wimbledon School of Art and the Saint Martin’s School of Art1986 – Moves to Montreal1989 – Moves to London, studies at the Chelsea School of Art1991 – Wins the Whitechapel Artist Award, London1994 – Is nominated for the Turner Prize1996-97 – Takes part in the exhibition About Vision: New British Painting in the 1990’s, United Kingdom2001 – Exhibition at the Morris and Helen Balkin Gallery, Vancouver, and at the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa2002 – Moves to Trinidad2004 – Takes part in the Carnegie International, Pittsburgh2007 – Takes part in the exhibition The Painting of Modern Life, Hayward Gallery, London, and Castello di Rivoli, Turin2008 – Retrospective at the Tate Britain, London, the Musée d’art moderne de la Ville de Paris and the Schirn Kunsthalle, Frankfurt2009 – Peter Doig and Stephen Hough, collaboration at Westminster Cathedral, London

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

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Angus Cook: Many of your landscapes relate to Canada andTrinidad…Peter Doig: I think Trinidad affected the paintings that I wasworking on prior to moving there in 2002. I had gone there forabout a month in 2000, after I was invited out of the blue to do aresidency there. I didn’t really know what to expect when Iarrived, and was pleasantly surprised by how much Iremembered.

A. C.: Like what?P. D.: I remembered the architecture. I could remember smells. Icould remember roads, and routes. It’s a potent place visually,just the experience of it, even at a young age, and I realised Ihad always felt very fond of this place, very connected to it eventhough I hadn’t been back in 33 years. I remembered just howsort of welcoming the people were, there would always be

A. C.: Maybe yours are all a self-portrait. Do you think of thelandscapes as a metaphor for what’s going on inside yourhead, and your inner life?P. D.: I think that’s probably what I do. It’s a good way ofthinking about making a painting. In a way, you have to own animage in your head, as well as own it on the canvas, as it were,before it becomes in any way believable.

A. C.: So painting is not just done with the eye and the hand,there’s a lot of brainwork involved too.P. D.: I never really understood what was so conceptual aboutconceptual art, anyway – all painting, pretty much, isconceptual. I mean, every painting is an idea. Every painting isthe result of a process. Conceptual art just removes thepleasures of looking – colour and beauty, things like that.

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something to talk about, a rapport. So just after being inTrinidad, I came back to London… and I finished a number ofpaintings that I’d started, which became more decorative in oneway, and more open in another way – the Hundred Years Agopainting for instance. I mean, I’d already played around with thatimagery but I didn’t really know what to do with it, really. And Ithink seeing the ocean, being on an island and seeing theseislands around the island and the experience of it all kind of in away opened things up, made the paintings a bit more expansivein some ways.

A. C.: So it’s been more of an unconscious evolution in yourart, rather than an intentional change. But when you’reworking on a new painting, you must be sometimes thinkingabout how the thing you are working on stands in relation toyour total body of work and how it might change it?P. D.: To some extent, but it ’s also difficult because in someways an artist is only ever capable of painting one painting,again and again, in a single lifetime.

A. C.: Over the past decade you seem to be moving intomore mystical territory. It partly derives from a certainchoice of subject-matter – pictures of saints, gurus, mystics,supernatural-seeming events. But it is also a product of theindeterminate, symbolist-y, or even abstract look to some ofthe paintings… Is this a reflection of a religious awakeningwithin you or an adjustment of emphasis, in aesthetic terms?P. D.: It’s more a questioning of everyday spirituality, thinkingabout that, and not to do with any specific beliefs. I mean, myhope is kind of that my work becomes even more abstract,really. It doesn’t have to always have such a direct reference tothe everyday or to objects. Recognizable objects. But I thinkthat’s something that’s gonna happen. I don’t want to reinventmyself as a kind of abstract artist and just reduce my paintingsto the elemental. I think some paintings have found themselvesgoing in that direction more obviously than others. But I think it’sgot to be something that I feel I can come to terms with it withinmyself. Even when Guston was supposedly no longer anabstract artist, his paintings were probably more abstract thanever, really.

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