Peter Doig

Private Collection, Holland
Haunch of Venison, London

When Peter Doig began painting in the mid 80s, the validity, function and significance of his chosen medium was under intense scrutiny. It was readily dismissed in favour of more modern, ‘socially relevant’ media and charged with accusations of sentimental self-reflection, yet despite this, he maintained a commitment to exploring the power and un-knowability of paint, and is today widely acknowledged as one of the most important artists of his generation.

Although consciously steeped in the great landscape tradition of his Canadian upbringing, Doig’s images and the moods they evoke are very much those of our own, uncertain times. Rarely depicting a specific, studied reality, they witness a combination of diverse and often contrary sources patched together in the cutting room floor of his imagination. Their gradual and organic process of creation evolves through various layers and stages during which unforeseen effects and new chance juxtapositions are encouraged to leave their mark. Often lifting his imagery from popular film and mass media sources, the paintings they inspire sit lodged in a subconscious, transitory void existing somewhere between shared, collective experience and individual existence. They partake in the kind of suggestive, open-ended filmic narratives found in Edward Hopper’s work; manifestations of psychological spaces which are both particular whilst remaining tantalisingly unspecific.

Doig’s figuration owes its existence to abstraction. Through the manipulations of his brush, the familiar and everyday is drenched in the mystery of the unknown, confronting the viewer as if through waking eyes. Often reusing the same imagery in different forms to enhance this sense of déjà-vu, Hitch Hiker (Reflected) is a dramatized re-appropriation of a motif that appeared in one of the first paintings he made after moving from Montreal to London in 1989. Whereas in the earlier version the truck had been cast into the distance and almost lost within the expanse of the dripping Pollockian landscape surrounding it, here Doig throws a nocturnal veil around the scene, illuminating the solitary vehicle within a oil-slick shroud that forms a spotlight upon its bright red form. In doing so he dramatically enhances the narrative suggestion of the composition as well as the title, transporting the viewer from the role of distant voyeur to that of the hitch hiker.