Peter Doig Signed Prints & Originals

Biography for Peter Doig

Born 1959

Peter Doig was born in Edinburgh in 1959, but moved with his family to Trinidad in 1962 and then on to Canada in 1966. Peter Doig came to England in 1979 to study fine art at Wimbledon, St Martin’s and Chelsea School of Art. In the mid 1980’s he lived and worked in Montreal, but kept a studio back in London. It wasn’t until the early 1990’s that Peter Doig began to make a name for himself with his distinctive approach to figurative painting. They were a breakthrough in his own practice, and quite unlike anything else in the London art scene of the early 1990s. Whilst this confounded some observers, by the mid-1990’s Peter Doig had attracted national and international acclaim.
In 1993 Peter Doig won first prize at the John Moores exhibition with his painting ‘Blotter’. Peter Doig, print, signed, Etching and Aquatint ‘Blooter’. In 1994 Peter Doig was nominated for the Turner Prize.
Peter Doig has continually challenged his own approach to painting and picture-making, the unpredictable evolution of his subjects and compositions, and the way in which themes appear and reappear.
Peter Doig returned to London to study painting at Chelsea School of Art, 1989-90. Disregarding the prevailing trend for a cool, processed aesthetic, Peter Doig made oil paintings of landscape subjects which were disarmingly romantic and vernacular in character.
It was a conscious effort to find his own new approach to painting: ‘Since I had just come back from Canada and was again searching for a subject, I started making these quite homely paintings, paintings of quite modest subjects’. Redolent of his Canadian upbringing, these landscapes were not direct representations but fictionalised images Peter Doig carried in his mind: ‘I want it to be more of an imaginary place – a place that’s somehow a wilderness’. Peter Doig, print, signed ‘Night Fishing’. Peter Doig, print, signed ‘Window Pane’. Peter Doig, print, signed ‘White Out’. Peter Doig, print, signed ‘From Pond Life’. Peter Doig, print signed ‘Ski Lift’. Peter Doig, print signed ‘Ski Jacket’. In ‘Ski Jacket’ it was a newspaper image of a Japanese ski resort combined in his mind with ideas of Japanese scroll painting that inspired this picture. Peter Doig, print signed ‘Ski Hill’. Peter Doig, print, signed ‘Alpiniste’. Peter Doig, print, signed ‘Blizzard 77’ (1). Peter Doig, print, signed ‘Blizzard 77’ (2). Peter Doig, print, signed ‘Blizzard 77’ (3). Peter Doig, print, signed ‘Blizzard 77’ (4). Peter Doig, print, signed ‘Blizzard 77’ (5). Peter Doig, print, signed ‘Blizzard 77’ (6). Peter Doig, print, signed ‘Blizzard 77’ (7). Peter Doig, print, signed ‘Blizzard 77’ (8).
Peter Doig’s landscapes are splendidly layered formally and conceptually, and draw on assorted artists from art history, including Edward Munch and Claude Monet to Friedrich and Klimt; Peter Doig, print, signed ‘Gasthof’. Peter Doig, print, signed ‘Masqueraders’.
Peter Doig’s works are frequently based on found photographs (and sometimes his own), but are not painted in a photorealist style. Peter Doig instead using the photographs simply for reference; Peter Doig, print, signed ‘Photograph 6’. Peter Doig, print, signed ‘Blotter’.
Peter Doig is best known for his series of paintings of ‘Le Corbusier’s modernist urban structures, they are partially revealed and hidden by the forest that surrounds them. As Peter Doig explains “When you walk through an urban environment, you take the strangeness of the architecture for granted”. The first was prompted by Peter Doig’s visit to the Unité d’Habitation apartments in Briey-en-Forêt, northeast France – one of several such visionary post war projects designed by the modernist architect Le Corbusier. Conceived as an ideal living space and opened in 1961, the apartment block fell into disrepair and was derelict by 1973, until subsequently reclaimed for habitation. In the early 1990’s Peter Doig was involved with a group of architects and artists who operated from the building. Peter Doig used a handheld video camera to capture the disorientating experience of moving through the surrounding woods towards the building, and worked from the still images which he captured. In Peter Doig’s paintings, the architecture appears and disappears within the screen of branches, so that foreground and background are held together in tension, opening up the drama within the surface of the painting.
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. The uninhabited landscapes and houses have a haunted aspect. Within these imaginative scenarios, the atmosphere is highly charged, yet the narrative is uncertain. Peter Doig, print, signed ‘Border House’. Peter Doig, print, signed ‘Red House’. Peter Doig, print, signed ‘Reflection (what does your soul like?)’. Peter Doig, print, signed ‘Grasshopper Portfolio Daytime Astronomy’. Peter Doig, print, signed ‘Camp Forestia’. Peter Doig, print, signed ‘Concrete Cabin’. Peter Doig, print, signed ‘Rosedale House’.
Peter Doig uses unusual colour combinations and depicts scenes from unexpected angles, all contributing to give his work a magic realistic feel; Peter Doig, print, signed ‘Big Sur’. Peter Doig, print, signed ‘Country Rock’. Peter Doig, print, signed ‘Canoe’. Peter Doig, print, signed ‘Drifter’. Peter Doig, print, signed ‘Pinto’. Peter Doig’s work is inspired by the flow of things seen every day and by the art he looks at, from past and present.
In the 1990s Peter Doig returns to themes and motifs such as the figure in the canoe (originally prompted by a scene from the horror film Friday the 13th) Peter Doig, print, signed ‘Canoe’. Peter Doig, print, signed ‘100 Years Ago’. Peter Doig, print, signed ‘Lunker’. That first appeared in his paintings a decade earlier.
Peter Doig’s work captures moments of tranquillity, which contrast with uneasy oneiric elements; Peter Doig, print, signed ‘100 Years Ago’. Many feature an isolated, anonymous figure – a motif that recurs throughout his career; Peter Doig, print, signed ‘White Out’. Peter Doig, print, signed ‘Blotter’. Peter Doig, print, signed ‘100 Years Ago’. Peter Doig, print, signed ‘Surfer’.
Peter Doig seems to test the means of making a painting: what it is that holds a painting together; Peter Doig, print, signed ‘Country Rock’. Here, strong horizontal bands create taut compositions, and assert the primacy of the painted surface – however various the handling in the differentiated areas.
As well as cabins tucked away in woods; Peter Doig, print, signed ‘Camp Forestia’. Peter Doig, print, signed ‘Concrete Cabin’. And skiers dotting mountain scenery; Peter Doig, print, signed ‘Almost Grown’. Lakes feature heavily in numerous well known works; in these paintings the motif is often seen from a distant viewpoint across a shore or from the other side of a river. The artist’s eye and imagination is increasingly drawn to a strangeness of form that has an abstract, primal quality such as in; Peter Doig, print, signed ‘Grasshopper Portfolio Canoe Lake’. Peter Doig, print, signed ‘Grasshopper Portfolio Night Fishing’. Peter Doig, print, signed ‘Paragon’. Peter Doig, print, signed ‘Lunker’. And Peter Doig, print, signed ‘Echo Lake’.
In 2002 Peter Doig moved back to Trinidad, where he set up a studio at the Caribbean Contemporary Arts centre near Port of Spain. Also at this time Peter Doig became professor at the fine arts academy in Dusseldorf, Germany. The following etchings and lithographs are influenced from this time; Peter Doig, print, signed ‘Untitled’ Lithograph. Peter Doig, print, signed ‘Lapeyrouse Wall’. Peter Doig, print, signed ‘Cyrils Bay’. Peter Doig, print, signed ‘Untitled’ Etching. Peter Doig, print, signed ‘From Black Palms Black Palms’. Peter Doig, print, signed ‘From Black Palms Boathouse’. Peter Doig, print, signed ‘From Black Palms Fisherman’. Peter Doig, print, signed ‘From Black Palms Hous der Bilder’. Peter Doig, print, signed ‘From Black Palms Man by a river’. Peter Doig, print, signed ‘From Black Palms Pelican’. As always, Peter Doig’s idea for a painting is stimulated by incidental, everyday, details that he has noticed and photographed: deriving from disparate visual sources that may superficially connect to Trinidadian subjects. Whatever Peter Doig’s starting point, the motif is filtered through multiple studies, and is subject to continual change driven unpredictably by what happens when the paint is applied to the canvas.
Peter Doig “a hero to other artists” had a major retrospective of his work (entitled “Peter Doig”) at Tate Britain; Peter Doig, print, signed, ‘Peter Doig Tate’.