Peter Doig Quotes & Sayings

How do you complete a painting, really? There are paintings by so many different artists that are interesting precisely because they haven't really been completed. — Peter Doig

I don't feel any real animosity towards critics when they write negative things. I think some are more perceptive than others. Some are very knowledgeable about painting. But it isn't something I have any influence over, so there isn't any point in worrying about it. — Peter Doig

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

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

A photo is like a map, a way of giving me a foot into a kind of reality I want ... I'm not trying to make paintings look like photos. I want to make paintings using photos as a reference, the way painters did when photography was first invented. — Peter Doig

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

Painting doesn't have a function, not in the way that music or film does ... I mean, you can dance to music. Music can be used for a soundtrack, so it has a function in that sense, beyond itself. But painting doesn't ... But I do believe that painting has a purpose. — Peter Doig

There could be a hundred paintings in every one painting, depending on when you stop. — Peter Doig

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

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

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

I sometimes wish I had never had to sell a painting. Every painting you make represents the time it was made and how you were feeling and what your influences were ... You are never going to feel that way again, so you can never repeat it ... — Peter Doig

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

I would never finish a painting if I didn't have a deadline. — 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

I constantly have to negotiate with my doubts. — Peter Doig

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

I'm not one of those artists having people there lying around on their paintings, you know, like Hockney or whoever. — Peter Doig

I also learned that you are affected by your environment, even if you try not to be. Color, light that is, matters because you want to do justice to it and also you get excited by it. — Peter Doig

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

Seeing a play, listening to music - you'll always contextualize it in your own way. Whoever you are, wherever you are; I think that's really important. — 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

Painting becomes interesting when it becomes timeless. — 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