Peter Doig
"Painting becomes interesting when it becomes timeless."
Doig’s was born in Edinburgh in 1959 and raised in Trinidad and Canada, a transitory experience that would later inform his approach to painting. He eventually moved to London in 1979 to pursue his studies in art, attending the Wimbledon School of Art and Saint Martin’s School of Art, before later completing an MA at the Chelsea School of Art in 1990. Doig’s work began to attract critical attention soon after: in 1991 he won the Whitechapel Artist Prize, which led to a solo exhibition at the Whitechapel Art Gallery, and in 1993 he was awarded the John Moores Painting Prize. The following year, he was shortlisted for the Turner Prize, cementing his reputation as a compelling new voice in contemporary painting during a period when figurative work was reclaiming prominence in the art world.
Over the following years, Doig developed a distinctive visual language that fused memory, landscape, and a dreamlike sensibility. After relocating to Trinidad in 2002, a place connected to his childhood, he established a studio near Port of Spain and drew on the island’s vibrant environment to enrich his palette and subject matter. His paintings from this period evoke evocative, enigmatic spaces, often landscapes infused with layered color, elusive figures, and atmospheric ambiguity, balancing figuration with abstract elements. Doig was the subject of solo exhibitions at Tate Britain (2008), the Scottish National Gallery (2013), and Fondation Beyeler (2014–15). His painting White Canoe achieved an auction record for a living European artist in 2007.
