Scottish National Gallery

Peter Doig No Foreign Lands

3 August – 3 November 2013

Peter Doig is one of the most internationally-renowned painters working today and this is the first major exhibition of the artist's work to be held in the country of his birth. No Foreign Lands surveys the paintings and works on paper that Doig has created during the past 10 years, with a particular emphasis on the artist's approach to serial motifs and recurring imagery. 

During the period covered by the works in this exhibition Doig has split his time between Trinidad, London, New York and Düsseldorf. Having left Edinburgh as a small child, Doig's peripatetic life and memories of growing up in Canada, before studying and living in London for 20 years, have given him a particularly rich visual knowledge and archive of motifs which enliven his works. As fellow Scot, Robert Louis Stevenson, wrote in The Silverado Squatters: ‘There are no foreign lands. It is the traveller only who is foreign.’ Although Doig may travel a lot, he is no foreigner seeking out the exotic. Rather his eye spots that significant detail which transcends locale and spans both time and space.

Over a career of nearly three decades, Doig has reinvigorated a medium considered by many to have fallen into irrelevance. His inventive style, uncommonly sensuous palette and suggestive imagery set him apart from the conceptual approach of much contemporary art. A willingness to take up the challenge still posed by the paintings of Gauguin, Matisse, Bonnard, Marsden Hartley and Edward Hopper places Doig in a long line of great colourists, expressive handlers of paint and creators of richly textured worlds. 

After Edinburgh, this exhibition will travel to Canada, where it will be shown at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts.

Mon–Sun, 10am–5pm (6pm during August, late opening until 7pm Thursdays)

Adult £8, concessions £6

Events

2 – 18 August 2013
Staycation! (Ages 4-12)

2–4:30pm

Free admission

3 August 2013
Peter Doig in Conversation with Keith Hartley

5–6pm

£5 (£4 concessions)