Peter Doig

Michael Werner Gallery, New York
Acquired directly from the above by the present owner in 2006 

Exhibition Catalogue, Dallas, Museum of Art; (and travelling), Peter Doig, Works on Paper, 2005-2006, no. 120, illustrated in colour

Colour: The colours in the catalogue illustration are fairly accurate, although the overall tonality is brighter and more vibrant in the original, with hints of sky blue to the sea in the foreground and more olive green hues across the mid-ground. Condition: This work is in very good condition. It is hinged to the backing board at intervals around the edges on the reverse. There are artist's pin holes in all four corners. All four edges are deckled. There is a very light diagonal rub mark to the centre left of the bottom edge, original to the artist's working process.
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One of the many uncanny enigmas of Peter Doig's paintings lies within the relationship or positioning he achieves between the artist, the subject and the viewer. There is a tangible feeling of distant memories trapped within his seemingly banal painted scenes; haunting, frozen images that resuscitate and interchange disparate moments from the artist's patchwork, remembered past. Born in Scotland and raised in Canada, Doig is a wanderer who has continued to travel extensively throughout his artistic life. He has actively sought-out, observed and embraced the many incidents, situations and atmospheres that he has been exposed to along the way, and the present work, Pelican, bears witness to the ongoing exchange and development of the ideas and experiences that continue to shape his creative sensibilities.

As with some of Doig's most iconic motifs, for example the series of 'canoe' paintings inspired by a scene he remembered in the cult-horror movie 'Friday the 13^th', the distant, beach-bound figure in Pelican is a subject he has reworked in numerous formats over the past five years since moving to live and work in Trinidad in 2002. The artist revealed the genesis and of the image in an interview he did recently with Chris Ofili: "I was thinking about confrontation with the subject," Doig explained. "They [the Pelican paintings] are reflections of the incident with the pelican that you and I witnessed the first time we came to Trinidad. We saw this guy off a remote beach, bobbing around in his underwear in the sea with a pelican. At first I thought he was rescuing the pelican, or it had broken its wing. Then it became clear that he was trying to drown it. He came on to the beach and as he walked along the sand, you could see that he was swinging the pelican around by its neck. The way the pelican was looping and looping he was obviously wringing its neck. He glared at us as if to say, you shouldn't be watching this. Of course, he was probably getting something to eat. It felt voyeuristic watching, but also incredibly exciting. It was amazing how he caught the pelican... I attempted to make paintings from this memory. I don't think we could have taken a photograph of it." (The artist cited in: Judith Nesbit, (Ed.), 'Peter Doig and Chris Ofili in Conversation', Peter Doig, London 2008, p. 122)

Both ambiguous and specific in mood, personal to the artist yet somehow familiar to the viewer, Pelican embodies the unique manner in which Doig's paintings explore the ambiguous and complex nature of emotions, experience and memory.