Lakes feature heavily in numerous well known works by Peter Doig, and the subject is often seen from a distant viewpoint across a shore or from the other side of a river. The artist’s eye and imagination is increasingly drawn to a strangeness of form that has an abstract, primal quality. This etching titled “Paragrand I”, first published in 2008 in an edition of 55, reflects on the relationship between man and nature, a prominent theme in both Doig’s artistic practice. Working in aquatint, Doig uses the medium’s textural ability, to enhance the watery haze of the acid-washed plate and suggestively slur the ink to evoke mysticism and spiritual undertones. This print is characteristically suspended between abstract and figurative tendencies. The print is signed, numbered and in good condition with a complimentary frame.
Paragrand I
Additional information
| Original / Edition | Edition of 55 |
|---|---|
| Medium | Etching with aquatint on Japanese surface gampi paper |
| Size | 61 x 51 cm |
| Year | 2008 |
Description
Peter Doig (Scottish, b. 1959) has become one of the most influential and critically acclaimed painters living today. His painting and printmaking is characterised by melding art historical and personal references into painterly abstractions of landscape and figures, with distinctive compositions. By forming powerful and affecting snapshots of contemporary existence—such as a childhood ski trip or an orange canoe—Doig’s works are both diaristic and universally relevant. Fiercely eclectic, his practice shares no central formula, and instead functions as part of a whole that provides insight into his personal history and political ethos. “I’m not trying to make paintings look like photos,” he has said of his process. “I want to make paintings using photos as a reference, the way painters did when photography was first invented.” Doig invites us to consider the status of the people, places and events that populate his pictures, whether they exist in private or public realms, in personal or shared experiences. Much of his work re-appropriates the vast and wrought history of painting through rich renderings of alternative scenes, rich with both romanticism and highly evocative of imagery and trends of contemporary culture. His work has been described as that of “magical-realism,” befitting his love of the Norwegian painter, Edvard Munch.