Peter Doig, artist

Desert Island Discs

BBC

Society & Culture, Music Commentary, Music, Personal Journals

4.4 • 13.7K Ratings

🗓️ 5 August 2023

⏱️ 36 minutes

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Summary

Peter Doig is one of Britain’s most successful living artists. His paintings have been exhibited at major galleries around the world, winning wide critical acclaim and selling for tens of millions of pounds at auction, setting sales records. Peter was born in Edinburgh in 1959, but grew up in Trinidad and Canada, where his father had chosen to work. Peter was partly educated at a Scottish boarding school, but didn't enjoy the experience. He returned to Canada, dropped out of education, and at the age of 17 found work on a gas rig in the rural west. He decided to move to London, largely attracted by the post-punk music scene, and from 1979 until the late 1980s, he trained as a painter at art schools in the capital, as well as spending time back in Canada. While his contemporaries among young British artists in the 1990s often created large-scale installations, sculptures or videos, Peter dedicated himself to painting, often working with very large canvases, creating atmospheric, mysterious landscapes acclaimed for their use of colour. In 2002, echoing his own childhood, he and his family moved to Trinidad, where he set up his studio. The island became his main home for almost two decades, before he moved to London in 2021. Presenter Lauren Laverne Producer Sarah Taylor

Transcript

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0:00.0	BBC Sounds, Music, Radio, Podcasts
0:04.9	Hello, I'm Lauren LeVern, and this is the Desert Island Disks podcast.
0:08.6	Every week I ask my guests to choose the eight tracks, book and luxury they'd want to take with them
0:13.9	if they were cast away to a desert island.
0:16.4	And for right reasons, the music is shorter than the original broadcast.
0:21.2	I hope you enjoy listening.
0:30.6	My cast away this week is The Painter Peter Doyle, one of Britain's most successful living artists.
0:50.8	He was born in Edinburgh, grew up in Trinidad and Canada, and trained in London.
0:55.5	His itinerant backstory once led him to describe himself as a nowhere painter,
1:00.4	and his creative path stands at odds with many of his contemporaries.
1:04.2	While back in the 1990s, works like Damien Hearst Shark, Tracy Emmons Unmade Bed,
1:09.0	and Steve McQueen's short films captured headlines and prizes,
1:12.6	his devotion to the paintbrush set him apart.
1:15.5	And it paid off.
1:16.8	His atmospheric, mysterious and often huge paintings blend the scene,
1:21.2	the remembered and the imagined, with influences from everywhere his life has taken him.
1:26.2	His work is revered by critics and has been likened to the greatest artists of the past,
1:30.6	including Broigal and Matisse.
1:32.7	He's also prized by collectors, setting records and fetching tens of millions at auction.
1:37.8	He, though, is more interested in something harder to quantify.
1:41.5	He says, I am trying to create something that is questionable,
1:45.6	something that is difficult, if not impossible, to put into words.
	...

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