Peter Doig Quotes

• 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

  Believe, Mean, Purpose

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• 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

  Photography, Reality, Feet

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• It's not about perfection. What's a perfect painting? What's interesting about a perfect painting?

  Peter Doig

  Perfect, Interesting, Perfection

  "Peter Doig: the outsider comes home". Interview with Stuart Jeffries, www.theguardian.com. September 5, 2012.

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• 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

  Thinking, Painting, Take Me

  "Peter Doig: the art of the foreign". Interview with Sean O'Hagan, www.theguardian.com. July 27, 2013.

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• Painting becomes interesting when it becomes timeless.

  Peter Doig

  Interesting, Painting, Timeless

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

  Peter Doig

  Painting, Hundred

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• 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

  Light, Color, Justice

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• I constantly have to negotiate with my doubts.

  Peter Doig

  Doubt

  Peter Doig, Carré d'art/Musée d'art contemporain de Nîmes (2003). “Peter Doig: Charley's space”, Hatje Cantz Publishers

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• 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

  Feelings, Wish, Way

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• 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

  Thinking, Play, Listening

  Interview with Joshua Jelly-Schapiro, believermag.com. March 2012.

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• 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

  Heart, People, Work Out

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

  Peter Doig

  Way, Painting, Made

  "Record painter" by Tim Adams, www.theguardian.com. January 27, 2008.

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• I would never finish a painting if I didnt have a deadline.

  Peter Doig

  Painting, Deadline, Ifs

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• 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

  Artist, Interesting, Different

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• 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

  Real, Writing, Thinking

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• 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

  Thinking, Outsiders, Trinidadians

  "Peter Doig: the outsider comes home". Interview with Stuart Jeffries, www.theguardian.com. September 5, 2012.

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• 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

  Artist, Strange

  "Record painter". Interview with Tim Adams, www.theguardian.com. January 27, 2008.

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• 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

  Thinking, Air, Space

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• 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

  Thinking, Want, Helping

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

  Peter Doig

  Lying, Artist, People

  Interview with Joshua Jelly-Schapiro, believermag.com. March 2012.

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• I love Trinidad and I love living there, but it's quite harsh.

  Peter Doig

  Harsh, Trinidad

  "Peter Doig: the outsider comes home". Interview with Stuart Jeffries, www.theguardian.com. September 5, 2012.

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