What Is Peter Doig Known For
Peter Doig is one of the most captivating and celebrated painters of the contemporary art world. Born in Edinburgh, Scotland, in 1959 and raised between Trinidad and Canada, Doig’s distinctive style has captivated collectors, critics, and art lovers alike. He is often celebrated for his dreamlike, enigmatic landscapes that merge memory, imagination, and reality. This article dives deep into Peter Doig’s artwork, his creative process, the value of his pieces, and his lasting influence on the art world.
Who Is Peter Doig?
Peter Doig is a Scottish-born painter known for his vibrant, atmospheric works that straddle the line between the figurative and the abstract. His art often depicts haunting landscapes, scenes of human solitude, and mysterious narratives that invite the viewer into another world. Doig is often associated with a resurgence of painting in the 1990s and is one of the most prominent artists to emerge from that era.
Despite his global fame, Doig remains somewhat of an enigma. He has lived and worked in various parts of the world, including Canada, London, and Trinidad, each of which has deeply influenced his artistic output. His paintings are often rooted in personal memories and dreams, capturing not specific locations, but emotional atmospheres.
Peter Doig is best known for his large-scale, dreamlike paintings that often explore themes of memory, solitude, displacement, and nostalgia. His work is distinguished by lush, layered surfaces, intricate detail, and a unique ability to evoke an emotional response.
One of Doig’s trademarks is his ability to transform mundane or familiar settings into otherworldly scenes. Whether it’s a canoe floating in a frozen lake or a ski lodge blanketed in snow, there’s always something surreal and unsettling in his imagery. He draws inspiration from a variety of sources: old photographs, movie stills, newspaper clippings, album covers, and personal memories.
Doig’s paintings often seem like portals into another dimension, places that are recognizable yet oddly out of reach, familiar yet foreign. This elusive quality is what makes his work so compelling.
Famous Artwork by Peter Doig
Peter Doig has created a substantial body of work, but several paintings have become particularly iconic:
1. “White Canoe” (1990–91)
Arguably Doig’s most famous painting, White Canoe is a haunting depiction of a white canoe floating on a glassy lake surrounded by trees. The reflection of the canoe in the water, the subtle color palette, and the tranquil atmosphere evoke a ghostly serenity. This painting sold for over $11 million at Sotheby’s in 2007, setting a record for a living European artist at the time.
2. “Swamped” (1990)
Another iconic canoe painting, Swamped features a small canoe in the midst of a dark, swampy lake surrounded by tangled vegetation. Like much of Doig’s work, this painting channels isolation and introspection. It sold for $26 million in 2015, further solidifying Doig’s status in the upper echelons of the art market.
3. “The Architect’s Home in the Ravine” (1991)
This eerie painting shows a modernist house tucked away in a dense forest. Based on a real house in Toronto, the painting feels both inviting and menacing. It reflects Doig’s fascination with modern architecture clashing with natural environments.
4. “Country-Rock (Wing-Mirror)” (1999)
This piece reflects Doig’s interest in how memory distorts vision. It depicts a view from a car wing mirror with blurred colors and distorted reflections. The work demonstrates his ability to make even everyday scenes poetic.
5. “Red House” (1995–96)
Part of his celebrated “House” series, Red House portrays a house surrounded by snow and trees. The red building glows with a sense of warmth yet is offset by the cold and silent winter landscape. This series plays on memory, emotion, and the idea of “home.”
What Art Style Is Peter Doig Associated With?
Peter Doig is most commonly associated with contemporary figurative painting and Neo-Romanticism. While his style cannot be pigeonholed, several art movements have influenced his work:
Post-Impressionism: Doig shares the Post-Impressionists’ interest in color, texture, and dreamlike imagery.
Symbolism: Much like Symbolist painters, Doig imbues his landscapes with psychological depth and mystical qualities.
Romanticism: His paintings often reflect the Romantic fascination with nature, solitude, and the sublime.
Expressionism: The emotional undercurrents and bold brushwork in his art echo Expressionist sensibilities.
Although not an abstract painter per se, Doig’s work often veers into abstraction through texture and color layering. His ability to balance figuration with abstraction gives his paintings their magnetic power.
How Does Peter Doig Make His Artwork?
Peter Doig’s creative process is deeply intuitive and layered. He does not paint directly from life but instead builds his compositions from photographs, memories, film stills, and sketches. He once said that his work is “about painting, not about a particular place,” emphasizing the imaginative nature of his process.
Key elements of his technique include:
Photographic Reference: Doig often begins with a found image, this could be a family photo, a scene from a film, or an archival image. But he uses it merely as a jumping-off point.
Layering: He builds up his surfaces with multiple layers of paint, often scraping away or obscuring parts of the image. This creates a sense of depth, time, and movement.
Color and Texture: Doig’s use of color is masterful. He often employs rich, unexpected hues, purples, oranges, greens, that bring his dreamlike visions to life.
Scale: Many of his paintings are large-scale, allowing viewers to become immersed in the landscape.
Doig works slowly and meticulously. Some of his pieces take years to complete, as he often revisits and reworks them over time.
What Materials Does Peter Doig Use?
Peter Doig primarily works in oil on canvas, although he also uses other materials such as:
Gouache
Tempera
Ink
Charcoal
Printmaking techniques (including etching and monoprinting)
His use of oil paint allows him to achieve the kind of depth, texture, and luminosity that define his style. Doig’s surfaces are often richly textured, with visible brushstrokes and layers that add to the sense of mystery and emotion.
How Much Does Peter Doig’s Artwork Cost?
Peter Doig’s artwork is among the most expensive in the world for a living artist. His paintings regularly fetch millions at auction, and the prices continue to rise as demand for his work increases.
Here are a few notable sales:
“Swamped” (1990) – Sold for $26 million at Christie’s in 2015.
“White Canoe” (1990–91) – Sold for $11.3 million at Sotheby’s in 2007.
“The Architect’s Home in the Ravine” (1991) – Sold for $16.3 million in 2016.
“Red House” (1995–96) – Sold for $21 million in 2017.
Even his prints and smaller works command high prices, often reaching into the hundreds of thousands.
Where Can You Find Peter Doig’s Artwork?
Peter Doig’s paintings are housed in major public and private collections around the world. Some of the institutions that have featured or collected his work include:
Public Collections:
Tate Modern, London
The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York
The Art Institute of Chicago
Centre Pompidou, Paris
National Galleries of Scotland
Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid
Exhibitions and Gallery Representation:
Doig is represented by Michael Werner Gallery and Galerie Buchholz, which regularly showcase his work. He has had solo exhibitions at:
Tate Britain (London)
Fondation Beyeler (Switzerland)
Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris
Scottish National Gallery
His work has also been included in major international exhibitions such as the Venice Biennale.
How Many Artworks Has Peter Doig Created?
While it is difficult to quantify precisely how many works Peter Doig has created, it is estimated that he has produced hundreds of paintings, along with numerous works on paper and prints.
His most productive periods span from the early 1990s to the present. Many of his series, such as the canoe paintings, ski lodge images, and Trinidad landscapes, have multiple variations and studies, contributing to a substantial and diverse oeuvre.
The Influence and Legacy of Peter Doig
Peter Doig has had a profound influence on the current generation of painters. His success marked a turning point in contemporary art, proving that figurative painting could still be relevant, moving, and innovative in a conceptual age.
Doig has also inspired a resurgence of interest in narrative and emotional depth in painting. His work offers a compelling alternative to minimalism and conceptualism, encouraging viewers to feel rather than simply analyze.
He is often cited by younger artists who are exploring similar themes of memory, landscape, and the surreal. His continued relevance and the enduring demand for his work suggest that his legacy will be lasting.
The Timeless Mystery of Peter Doig
Peter Doig’s paintings are like waking dreams, familiar, yet filled with ambiguity and emotional weight. Through his unique blend of figuration, abstraction, memory, and fantasy, Doig has carved out a distinctive space in contemporary art. Whether you’re encountering his work in a museum, gallery, or auction house, the effect is the same: a quiet, powerful invitation to enter another world.
His art reminds us of the beauty and mystery in the in-between spaces, between past and present, memory and imagination, real and unreal. That is the enduring magic of Peter Doig.
If you’re interested in experiencing his work in person, check the latest exhibitions at institutions like Tate Modern or MoMA, or visit Michael Werner Gallery, where his new work is often showcased. Whether you’re a seasoned collector or a new admirer, Peter Doig’s art offers a profound and poetic journey into the depths of human imagination. image/wikiart.org
