Peter
Doig
Canoe-Lake
1997-8, Oil on Canvas
200 x 300cm |
Themes
of magical realism stream through Doig’s work, capturing
timeless moments of perfect tranquillity, where photo-album
memory flits in and out of waking dream. Drawing from his
Canadian childhood, and one of the spookier scenes from Friday
the 13th, Doig’s canoes have become a seminal image
in his work; their reflection in the water, like a double
life, is a fantasy mirror to the unknown. Canoe-Lake is rendered
with unsettling perfection: capturing not just a spying view
over a fence, but the strange echoing silence of drifting
on a lake, the impossible stillness of the current, and the
cloying warmth of late-summer air. |