Peter Doig talks to Ben Luke about his influences—from writers to musicians, film-makers and, of course, other artists—and the cultural experiences that have shaped his life and work. Doig, who was born in Edinburgh in 1959 but grew up in Trinidad and Canada, has created a relentlessly inventive and evolving body of paintings over the past 40 years. Informed by memory, by Doig’s own photographs and found images, by an intimate knowledge and interpretation of art history, by a profound response to place and architecture, and by images and moods evoking diverse cultural forms beyond visual art, his works possess a poetic and sonorous sense of feeling and atmosphere. Often realised over many years, each painting is unique rather than part of a series, even if it shares recurring iconography with other pieces. Fundamentally concerned with figuration, Doig draws on a vast range of painterly approaches from resonant stains to thick impasto, stretching his medium to its full expressive potential and into the realms of abstraction. He has said that he wants painting to be a world unto itself and perhaps no other artist of the past few decades has created such a distinctive language for achieving that aim. Indeed, so widespread is his influence that one might describe a painterly strand in recent art around the globe as Doigian. Across his career, Peter’s work has been informed by a passionate engagement with music. He has said: “Music, being an invisible art form, is open to interpretation within the mind’s eye, and reflections from the mind’s eye are often what I’m attempting to depict in my work.” He achieves a particular tonality and ambience that evoke his aspiration to the condition of that artform, a factor emphasised in House of Music, the exhibition at the Serpentine South until 8 February 2026. He discusses several of the paintings in that show in depth, and reflects on his changing response to Trinidad, where he was based between 2002 and 2019, and his references in the paintings to the “residues of imperialism”. Among much else, he discusses the early influence of Edward Burra, his enduring fascination with Henri Matisse, his response to early graffiti art in New York, and his current fascination with Caravaggio’s Beheading of St John the Baptist (1608). He talks about his friendship and collaboration with the poet Derek Walcott and the importance to his work of STUDIOFILMCLUB, the repertory cinema he founded in his Port of Spain studio with Che Lovelace. Plus, he gives insight into his life in the studio, and answers our usual questions, including the ultimate: “what is art for?”
Peter Doig: House of Music, Serpentine South, London, until 8 February 2026. There are a number of Sound Service events on Sundays through the length of the exhibition, as well as other evening sessions. Visit serpentinegalleries.org to find out more.
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