Peter Doig is one of the most renowned contemporary figurative painters and for a while held the record for most expensive artwork sold at auction by a living artist.
Based across New York, Dusseldorf and Trinidad, his large-scale works often have a dreamy, imaginative quality. Figures seems to fade and emerge out of hot, rich landscape backgrounds – a solo canoeist, a series of cricketers, a group of disjointed friends. Trees entangle, stars twinkle, water reflects and cars pass by, and through it all, rising from the paint, is a depth and the sense of something unsettled. His colours are beautifully evocative, sometimes soft and complementary, often bold and striking, contributing to the overall essence and experience of our viewing.
Doig uses found photography and other existing imagery such as film stills, newspaper cuttings and art historical references as a basis for his work, then painting expressively in response to them – this approach and his particular painterly technique often generate a sense of slipping and emergence, of things evolving and receding, memory, sensation and remembering.