“I like the singleness of being a painter.”
We visited the painter’s painter, Peter Doig, in London for a conversation about his life, work, and curiosity about the world.
”I do think paintings can reflect travel and migration, personal migration. I think the quality of questioning is really important. Why? Why is one place like this and not like that? And I think the advantage of having lived within different societies and very different cultures has been useful for me as a painter and also useful as a person.”
”Starting a painting is always the most difficult thing. Does this idea warrant further investigation? Does this idea warrant the time it will take to resolve it? Will I get bored with it? Will I want to abandon it?”
“I don’t think paintings can, or a painting can change the world. But I do think a painting can situate you within the world, you, the viewer. It’s important to think about the viewer, not just yourself, the artist.”
Peter Doig (b. 1959 in Edinburgh, Scotland) grew up in Trinidad and Canada before moving to London to study at Saint Martin’s School of Art and Chelsea School of Art. Since 2002, he has divided his time between London and Trinidad, where he set up a studiofilmclub, an influential repertoire cinema club he hosted in his studio in Laventille. Major survey exhibitions include Tate Britain, London (2008, traveled to ARC/Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris and Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt, Frankfurt am Main, Germany, 2008–09); No Foreign Lands, National Gallery of Scotland, Edinburgh (2013, traveled to Musée des beauxarts de Montréal, 2014); Fondation Beyeler, Riehen/Basel (2014–15); National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo (2020); and Courtauld Gallery, London (2023). In 2023–24, he curated the exhibition Reflections of the Century at Musée d’Orsay, Paris, which placed his works in dialogue with selections from the museum’s collection. This was followed by the major solo exhibition House of Music at the Serpentine, London (2025–26), which explored the intersections of painting and sound.
Doig taught for many years, notably at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, Germany, where he held a professorship from 2004 to 2017. He was nominated for the Turner Prize in 1994 and, in 2008, was awarded the Wolfgang Hahn Prize by the Gesellschaft für Moderne Kunst of the Museum Ludwig in Cologne, Germany. Doig was awarded the Praemium Imperiale Prize for Painting in 2025.
Peter Doig was interviewed by Marc-Christoph Wagner in London in February 2026. The conversation took place in the Serpentine Galleries on the occasion of Doig’s exhibition House of Music.
Camera: Simon Weyhe
Edited by: Nanna Dahm
Produced by: Marc-Christoph Wagner
Copyright: Louisiana Channel, Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, 2026
© Peter Doig. All Rights Reserved.
Courtesy of the Artist
Photography: @ Prudence Cuming.
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