彼得‧多伊格生于爱丁堡,在特立尼达和加拿大成长,1979年返回英国。他就读于温布尔登艺术学院和圣马田艺术学院,其后于伦敦切尔西艺术学院攻读艺术硕士课程。2002年返回特立尼达生活及工作至今。
虽然多伊格的作品几乎全都是风景画,但他却是一位另类的风景画家,亦一直抗拒与传统风景画扯上关系。他的作品不拘一格,所描绘的风景,是记忆与想象之间的形象,灵感来自都市生活中偶遇的摄影或电影题材,或童年时期的风景印记。画面基本上是虚假的形象,带有奇特的色彩和光影效果、不协调的透视角度和绘画传统与技法的融合。在白雪覆盖的山坡上,在池边或湖畔,在森林或沼泽里都可见一些人,但他们的出现,似是基于构图上的考虑。丛林间我们也可隐约瞥见富有现代特色的建筑或小屋,但它们存在于这地方的原因却难以考究。
多伊格作品中的风景是来自他童年的印记。在大幅的帆布上重现了加拿大辽阔的土地,除了凭借个人记忆外,还会结合观赏者对该土地的概念,以及人们对某些地点的共同回忆。广阔的全景,教人想起相关的电影画面。多伊格亦承认作品加入了电影中连环镜头的效果。他曾对自己其中一件作品这样形容︰「这是《国家地理杂志》中的一张照片的再演绎,令我想起儿时魁北克家附近的一个地方。作品所描绘的,尽都是凭记忆组成的虚构场景。」
这次展出的十幅蚀刻版画,都是多伊格根据自己在1992至95年初的绘画作品而制成的。他形容这过程是「为以往一些作品编制目录」。蚀刻版画的原稿是绘画,而绘画的蓝本则是照片,照片多是由他自己拍摄的。除了其中三幅外,其余作品都是对他小时候在加拿大住处的描绘。名为《混凝土小屋》的两件作品,描绘的是法国东北部柯布西耶设计的「马赛公寓」。
《无题(绿色)》(1998)是多伊格对油彩纸本研习的作品之一,部分灵感据说来自肖恩‧坎宁汉的恐怖电影《黑色星期五》的结局。
多伊格的大型回顾展曾于2008年在泰特英国美术馆举行,其后到巴黎现代艺术博物馆和法兰克福席恩美术馆作巡回展出。其他个展包括:达拉斯美术馆(2005);慕尼黑现代美术馆(2004);伯尔尼方顿博物馆(马斯特里赫特,2003);以及白教堂画廊(伦敦,1998)。1994年获提名「特纳奖」。
Edinburgh born Peter Doig spent his childhood growing up in Trinidad and Canada before coming back to the UK in 1979. He then attended both Wimbledon School of Art and St Martin’s School of Art before going on to study for his MA at Chelsea School of Art in London. He returned to Trinidad in 2002 where he now continues to live and work.
He established a reputation as an artist whose oeuvre consists almost exclusively of landscapes, but he is a landscape painter only in a very altered sense of the classification. He has always resisted association with the landscape tradition and his work is not concerned with the rigid conventions of a genre. The landscapes he represents are images hovering between memory and imagination, triggered by photographic or cinematic sources chanced upon during urban existence or from the repertoire of personal memories of the landscapes of his childhood. These are essentially artificial images that use a curious range of colours and light effects, inconsistent perspectives and a fusion of pictorial conventions and techniques. Amidst the snow-covered slopes, by a pond or a lake, forest or swamp, figures can be discerned but they appear only to fulfil some formal function in the composition. What narrative these figures form part of is unclear. Modernist buildings or cabin style houses are glimpsed through gaps in trees but their function in this location is equally uncertain.
Doig evokes the landscape of his childhood. On big canvases, he replays the vast landscape of Canada, using not only his own bank of memories, but also the viewer’s own conceptions of that landscape and shared memories of place. The broad panorama is reminiscent of cinema film and its scope. The artist has acknowledged the effect of film sequences on his work. He has described one of his paintings as “a rendering from a photo found in National Geographic that served as a reminder of a place near where I lived in Quebec as a youngster. It is a fairly fictitious view of a memory”.
The ten etchings shown in this exhibition derive from Doig’s own paintings from the period 1992 to early 1995. The artist describes the process as “a way of cataloguing some of the work I have made over the previous years”. While all the etchings originate from the paintings, the paintings in turn originate from photographs, mostly taken by the artist. All but three prints relate to his childhood home of Canada. The two works entitled Concrete Cabin refer to Le Cobusier's Unité d'habitation in North East France.
Untitled (Green) (1998) is one of a number of oil on paper studies made by Doig, the inspiration of which is said to have partially come from the concluding moments of the Sean Cunningham horror film Friday the 13th.
Doig has had a major retrospective exhibition at Tate Britain, 2008 which toured to Musée d’Art moderne de la Ville de Paris and Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt. Other solo shows include Dallas Museum of Art, 2005; Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich, 2004; Bonnenfanten Museum, Maastricht, 2003 and Whitechapel Art Gallery, London, 1998. Doig was nominated for the Turner Prize in 1994.