Doig is a legend

I went and saw Peter Doig’s show at Tate Britain the other day. I didn't know of him before... apparently his stuff sells for some serious doe - £11 million for a painting to be exact… and I can see why – I freakin’ loved it.

Doig takes scenes, either from reality or from films and embellishes them with his own take on texture, realism and imagination. Even though his style is largely unique, I found each of his paintings really different. Some of them are really mystical, and others are more blunt, more realistic. I loved ‘Gasthof zur Muldentalsperre’ (2002 - above). It is a painting of two different photographs mapped together, one is of a dam and lake from a German postcard originating from 1910. The other is a photo of Doig and his mate in fancy dress – they are in costumes from the ballet ‘Petrouchka’ from when they worked at a theatre and had their photo taken. The mysterious, fairytale quality that Doig manages to evoke is brilliant – and the idea is as delightful as its delivery.

The second that really got to me was ‘Metropolitan (House of Pictures)’ (2004). According to Tate Britain, Doig came across a painting by a 19^th century French artist ‘Honore Daumier’ of an arts connoisseur looking intently at prints. Doig loved the stance, outfit and expression of Honore so painted him, ironically looking at Doig’s own work. To the figure he added facepaints, as he was living in Trinidad at the time, and apparently during Carnival it is common for Trinidadians to paint there faces white and nose and cheeks red to mock Europeans (hehe- good for them!!)

Anyway, the squares actually reminded me of some of my own paintings. If only I had used him as an influence – I reckon I could of taken some of my work further than I got. My own influences were Edward Hopper, Lichtenstein and Ken Howard. I love a mixture of abstraction and realism, and variable textures and colours are essential to my paintings. Below is a painting of my school art room (2002). It was a pretty boring brown room at the time, but there was so much creative work hanging on the walls, that it influenced the colours in my work. The second two, I did when I was in California (2004) and are reflections of my obsession with palm trees. For Palm 2 (second painting), I painted the buildings in abstraction, as I was staying in a yucky peach coloured modernist motel. In my mind it was a great place, but in a painting its realism looked ugly to me. Plus the light at the time had a huge purple/pink effect on the wall. Laslty, I wanted the colours to reflect my own fairytale existence on the sunshine coast.

My favourite thing about Doig is that he often takes things that he finds interesting from other works of art (film, photos, paintings) and puts it into his own work, playing with time, space and the medium (in most cases oil) itself. It’s cheeky, ballsy and LEDGY. Big up Doig, thank you for backing oil painting in contemporary art.

(pic 1. ‘Gasthof zur Muldentalsperre’ (2002), Peter Doig, Tate Britain, pic 2. ‘Metropolitan (House of Pictures)’ (2004), Peter Doig, Tate Britain, Pic.3 Art room, Lucy Hurst, Pic 4. Palms, Lucy Hurst, Pic 5. Palms 2, Lucy Hurst.)