Peter Doig Quotes

United Kingdom, Artist
April 17, 1959

Peter Doig (born 17 April 1959) is a Scottish painter. One of the most renowned living figurative painters, he has settled in Trinidad since 2002. In 2007, his painting White Canoe sold at Sotheby's for $11.3 million, then an auction record for a living European artist. In February 2013, his painting, The Architect's Home in the Ravine, sold for $12 million at a London auction. Art critic Jonathan Jones said about him: "Amid all the nonsense, impostors, rhetorical bullshit and sheer trash that pass for art in the 21st century, Doig is a jewel of genuine imagination, sincere work and humble creativity."

Also known as Painter

As an artist, you are aware there is this strange money market out there, but you have no sense of how it works.

Peter Doig
- Money
I love Trinidad and I love living there, but it's quite harsh.

Peter Doig

I do feel Scottish in some way. Maybe it's to do with visiting my grandparents here every summer as a child, but I am aware of my Scottish ancestry. It's there all right, but it would be pushing it to label me a Scottish painter. Or, indeed, an anywhere painter.

Peter Doig
- Summer
- Grandparents
It's still an escape for me, painting, so it also takes me elsewhere. I don't think I would do it otherwise.

Peter Doig
- Painting
It's not about perfection. What's a perfect painting? What's interesting about a perfect painting?

Peter Doig
If you are someone like Jeff Koons, and you have to work out how to make a big chrome heart or something, then there are lots of people and a big production involved. The money is more natural somehow. For me, I am just on my own in the studio, trying to make things work. One thing is sure: it doesn't make painting any easier.

Peter Doig
- People
- Work
- Trying
What is bad painting? Picabia made some deliberately bad paintings, but they were by him, so great in a way.

Peter Doig
- Great
- Bad
- Painting
I would never finish a painting if I didn't have a deadline.

Peter Doig
- Painting

When I was growing up, I never felt that I belonged anywhere because we never lived in a house for more than three months. That's all I knew, and that's why I don't really belong anywhere.

Peter Doig
- Up
- Why
- House
Painting becomes interesting when it becomes timeless.

Peter Doig
- Interesting
- Painting
You cannot just be working in a vast, air-conditioned loft space and think you are going to make a decent painting. Francis Bacon had a special studio built, and he felt completely emasculated in there. I have to be somewhere comfortable.

Peter Doig
- Space
- Air
- Painting
I don't think money can help you become a better painter, for sure. You can have all the studios you want; it won't help you make a better painting.

Peter Doig
- Money
- Help
- Painting
I've always been an outsider. Even in London. If I returned to Scotland, I'd feel a complete foreigner.

Peter Doig
I think if I was Trinidadian, I would latch more on to the myths and romanticise the place more. I don't think it's my place to do that - they're not really mine. I'm an outsider.

Peter Doig