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Text written by Patricia Ellis

Using film stills, footage of actual events or photographs of urban and natural environments, Peter Doig’s work emanates a quiet nostalgia. His paintings convey a sense of borrowed memory, of peering into an intimate realm of past experience – of place and self. In Concrete Cabin, the artist borrows images from a variety of sources – most notably from the functionalist architect Le Corbusier – to create an imaginary voyeuristic experience.

Nominated for the Turner Prize in 1994 and winner of the John Moores Foundation Prize in ‘93, Peter Doig acknowledges the shared experience effect of his paintings, but distances himself from a linear reading. ‘People often say that my paintings remind them of particular scenes from films or from certain passages from books, but I think it’s a different thing altogether. There is something more primal about painting’. The act of applying paint, layering images on top of one another, involving oneself physically with the surface of the object, undermines the value of the borrowed image and reasserts the primacy of the act.

The melting pot of subjects in Peter Doig’s work reference his own experiences, as well as the wider context of social and cultural development. Canadian landscapes are jumbled up with urban planning, Romantic motifs such as the lone boat mixed with horror film imagery (Canoe-Lake), natural environments rendered in Impressionistic impasto executed in a toxic colour scheme. This layering of reference not only reflects the multiplicity of contemporary life – the identity crisis of postmodern art – but also creates unconventional formal results.

The Architect’s Home in the Ravine is cut to shreds – almost obliterated - by a network of snow-covered branches. The work creates a sense of unease in the act of looking, echoing the generic horror movie scene where the psychopath hides, watching from the bushes. Is it possible to construct the ideal habitat, or is ‘outside’ more comforting and familiar? Security, though, is not a productive state. The safety of the refuge is called into question across Doig’s oeuvre. It is this self-referencing, above all, which invigorates Peter Doig’s paintings and creates a tension - a ‘presentness’ - that is felt by every viewer.

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