Ridinghouse Editions, London
Anderson O'Day Fine Art, London
Private Collection, London

London, Riding House Editions, Peter Doig-Small Paintings, 1996-1997

Colours: The colours in the catalogue illustration are fairly accurate although the overall tonality is brighter and more vibrant in the original, with the light green tending more towards pistachio and more pronounced hues of orange to the throughout. Condition: This work is in very good condition. There is a minute chip to the lower left and upper right corner tips. There are some unobtrusive irregularities in places throughout the surface and some minute losses to the wood on the right edge, all of which are inherent to the artist's choice of medium.
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Expanding across the horizon in a filmic manner of a storyboard or comic strip, Drifter by Peter Doig is an autobiographical masterpiece that brings toge🦄ther and gives new meaning to some of his best known motifs. Combining multiple images in a 360 degree view of a vast, panoramic landscape, this painting's dynamic lateral format, unique in the artist's work, gives fresh expression and insight into the complex interplay of disparate visual narratives co-exiting within his oeuvre.

Taking a specific source idea or experience as the starting point for each composition, his paintings often evolve through a process of spontaneous association and juxtaposition in which the boundaries between personal imagery and those from a 'collective memory' bank of mass media and filmic images disappear. "My experience is just the spark... which makes me think about things that are a part of other people's experience." (Peter Doig cited in: Paul Bonaventura, 'Peter Doig: A Hunter in the Snow', Artefactum 9, 1994) As each paꦬinting develops through dislocated passages of unforeseen development, collective memory and visual impression frequently dislodge the primary role of thꦉe starting image. This liberal approach to motifs and sources sees a frequent shift in perspective and mood, often bringing together scattered places, people, objects and situations in a single image.

A sensory drifter who has travelled throughout his life, absorbing and processing countless experiences into a reservoir of visual images, Doig often re-works subjects from earlier paintings in different guises, reversing or sometimes isolating motifs to invest them with fresh meaning and new suggestion. This recycling technique is characteristic of his work and is central to the uncanny sense of déjà vu and quisence that lingers within them. Here in Drifter, Doig juxtaposes passages found in several earlier paintings such Corn Cob, Pine House (Rooms for Rent) and Jetty. In doing so, he points to hitherto unseen connections between these paintings; connections which were recently discussed by Judith Nesbitt in her introduction to the artist's Tate Britain retrospective: "Pine House (Rooms for Rent) was a house for transient workers that Doig photographed following a bad fire... . Jetty Doig imagined as a kind of postcard that one of the residents in Pine House might have pinned to his bedroom wall, a picture to be gazed at before drifting into sleep."  (Judith Nesbitt, 'A Suitable Distance' in Exhibition Catalogue, London, Tate Britain, Peter Doig, 2008, p. 12) In bringing these two separate images together side by side, Doig underlines their conceptual link whilst creating an entirely new panorama through which to unravel the unfolding drama of Drifter.  Drawing together memories and motifs from his own lif❀e and work, and infusing them into the wider collective consciousness of shared experience, Doig's vision here beautifully captures the assortꩲed richness and layered mutability of existence.