Peter Doig
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Peter Doig (born 1959) is a Scottish painter whose paintings are among Europe's most expensive.[1]
A major retrospective of his work, entitled "Peter Doig", was held at Tate Britain in 2008.
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[edit] Biography
Peter Doig was born in Edinburgh, and in 1962 moved with his family to Trinidad, where his father worked with a shipping and trading company, and then in 1966 to Canada. He went to London in 1979 to study art at the Wimbledon School of Art, St Martin's School of Art (where he became friends with Billy Childish) and later the Chelsea School of Art, where he received an MA.
In 1993 he won the first prize at the Liverpool John Moores University exhibition with his painting Blotter. This brought public recognition, cemented in 1994, when he was nominated for the Turner Prize. From 1995 to 2000 he was a trustee of the Tate Gallery.
In 2002, Doig moved back to Trinidad, where he set up a studio at the Caribbean Contemporary Arts centre near Port of Spain, and also became professor at the fine arts academy in Duesseldorf, Germany.
[edit] Work
Many of Doig's pictures are landscapes, with a number harking back to the snowy scenes of his childhood in Canada. Doig’s landscapes are splendidly layered formally and conceptually, and draw on assorted artists from art history, including Edvard Munch and Claude Monet to Friedrich and Klimt. His works are frequently based on found photographs (and sometimes on his own), but are not painted in a photorealist style, Doig instead using the photographs simply for reference. Peter Doig’s work captures moments of tranquillity, which contrast with uneasy oneiric elements. He uses unusual colour combinations and depicts scenes from unexpected angles, all contributing to give his work a magic realist feel. In The Architect’s Home in the Ravine the thick undergrowth partly obscures the house. It is the play of twig-like shapes and range of colours overlapping the building which one notices. His scenes that involve lakes with canoes, cabins tucked away in the woods, and skiers dotting mountain scenery are his most well-known subjects and ones he tends to repeat. [2]
In 2003, Doig started a weekly film club called StudioFilmClub in his studio together with Trinidadian artist Che Lovelace.
In 2005 he was one of the artists exhibited in part 1 of The Triumph of Painting at the Saatchi Gallery in London.
Doig is one of Europe's most expensive living painters.
[edit] Notes and references
- ^ "National Galleries eyes up Doig after £5.7m sale", Sunday Herald, 11 February, 2007
- ^ Meredith Mendelsohn (February 20, 2008), Artist Dossier: Peter Doig, ARTINFO, <http://www.artinfo.com/news/story/26612/artist-dossier-peter-doig/>. Retrieved on 23 April 2008
[edit] Literature
- Hans-Jürgen Tast (Hrsg.) „As I Was Moving. Kunst und Leben“ (Schellerten/Germany 2004) (z.m.a. K.) ISBN 3-88842-026-1;
