Canoe Island
by PETER Doig

PETER Doig

Peter Doig's paintings have a tendency to disorientate us, even when they depict recognisable imagery such as figures and buildings. We are often plunged into an unreliable world of reflections, sometimes literally when we are presented with the icy lakes and watery depths that feature in paintings such as Swamped, 1990, and Window Pane, 1993, but more often in a metaphorical sense - the mirror image of memory or fantasy. Doig invites us to consider the status of the people, places and events that populate his pictures, whether they exist in private or public realms, in personal or shared experiences. The refuges and defences against nature often seen in Doig's work are a kind of visual corollary for such considerations. We might also see in them an artist measuring the gaps between thought and language, painting as an individual pursuit and a shared experience.

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