Peter Doig

Galerie Ghislaine Hussenot, Paris
Patrick Painter, Inc., Santa Monica
Nicole Klagsbrun, New York 
Saatchi Collection, London

London, Saatchi Gallery, The Triumph of Painting, 2005, pp. 42-43, illustrated in colour

Adrian Searle, Kitty Scott and Catherine Grenier, Peter Doig, London 2007, p. 125, illustrated in colour

Colour: The colours in the catalogue illustration are fairly accurate although the overall tonality is richer and warmer and has less blue tones throughout in the original. The clothes of the figures are less vibrant in the original. Condition: This work is in very good condition. No restoration is apparent under ultra-violet light.
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"We've all experienced the sensation of light dropping and producing strange natural effects, and I think in a way I am using these natural phenomena and amplifying them through the materiality of paint and the activity of painting.  Anyone who has been in a snowstorm, with the sunlight fading, will have experienced that.  When I was making the 'snow' paintings I was looking a lot at Monet, where there is this incredibly extreme, apparently exaggerated use of colour."  The artist cited in: Adrian Searle, Kitty Scott & Catherine Grenier, Peter Doig, London 2007, p. 132

Monumental in scale and with a velvety texture of paint which almost feels like snow, White Creep, 1995-96 represents the ultimate post-modern depiction of a snow scene. Emanating from a group of skiing scenes which Doig began around this time, including Ski Jacket which is now in the collection of Tate, London, these works bring the feeling and experience of being in the mountains very much to life through the replication of the colour, texture and weight of snow in paint as well as the completely unique light of its chromatic depiction. Although Doig himself has cited Claude Monet as a direct inspiration for this series, through his classic Impressionist depictions of landscapes in various atmospheres, light and seasons, these works vary dramatically from his predecessor in their attempts to directly translate the experience through scale and texture. Whereas Monet famously worked en plein air in the environment and attempted to depict a direct representation of the scene, Doig paints from photographs using his first hand experience to convey the feeling of being there, experiencing the awesome grandeur of the landscape and touching the snow. Having grown up in Canada, Doig spent much of his youth in the great outdoors in all seasons and became an avid skier. It is this, melded with his incredible technique and passion for paint and great knowledge of art history which have brought a completely fresh and invigorated perspective to landscape painting.

What makes Doig so progressive as a painter is the way that he has absorbed the history of the great art which has come before him and now knowingly manipulates it to create a completely new perspective on painting which can be read in multiple ways. As ever with Doig, there is a knowing balance here between the high figuration of the scene which is being depicted and the abstract devices which he is using to present it. The intricate texture of white paint is reminiscent of Robert Ryman's stripped back abstract/conceptual white paintings of the 1960s onwards. However here, Doig is manoeuvring these abstract processes of painterly application to actually convey the sensation of snow. Skilfully manipulating the tone and texture of the white paint, Doig creates a sensation of perspective and the gradations of light and depth are expertly employed to create a dramatic and monumental sense of the rugged mountainscape. The foreground feels almost like you can touch it and experience the cold and the further the scene drops back the more blurred it becomes. The various tones of white throughout the surface lend an overall softness to the picture.  As Doig recalls, "When I made the first skiing paintings, they were made as a reaction to things I had made previously, paintings with a proliferation of matter on the surface of the canvas.  I had wanted to get away from that device of always 'looking through', whether it be trees, branches or snow - in to the painting.  It could have become manneristic.  I wanted to make things more open" (the artist cited in: Adrian Searle, Kitty Scott & Catherine Grenier, Peter Doig, London 2007, p. 135).

With its double horizon line, one high up and one purposefully jutting diagonally across the centre of the composition, Doig is also playing here with the conventions of art history. One can sense the influence of artists such as the Abstract Expressionist, Clyfford Still and his manipulation of abstract forms on a grand, human scale. The central line represents a daring precipice but it also completely opens up the space back to the sheer drop which lurks behind it, possibly the origin of the title, White Creep which is an extreme form, of avalanche. Here, the long dark shadows which descend the mountain in the background and animate the crags and cravasses literally pulsate with the threat of an impending avalanche. Beneath this line, to the left side of the composition, lurking around the precipice, are clusters of figures which immediately provide a scale relationship to the scene. Much as Caspar David Friedrich had used figures to convey the monumentality of landscape in his much smaller paintings which coined the term German Romanticism in the 19th century, Doig here uses light injections of colour to create small vignettes of human incursion onto these dangerous slopes. Further influence is also provided on this front by the Group of Seven painters who were at the forefront of Candian Modernism. Artists, such as Tom Thompson sought to paint where no man had set foot before and White Creep provides a similar experience of the painter as explorer.

Doig has recounted a story which was the inspiration behind this painting which relates directly to a skiing trip he made to Val d'Isere in 1994. Having found this beautiful area of off-piste landscape and taken the photograph which became the reference point for the painting, Doig took his brother and a couple of friends back the following day to share his discovery (possibly the figures in this painting). However whilst there a huge avalanche took place and almost enshrouded them with huge boulders of snow and a symphony of booms ringing in their ears, hence the title of this work. Doig has discovered the frightening excitement of this event and the enormous effort it took the group to haul themselves out of the situation.

Hence White Creep distils a whole range of ideas and influences which extend from his own memory and youth, through his art historical predecessors and the contemporary film and photography with which he is thouroughly engaged to create an image of simply stunning beauty on the one hand and profound complexity on the other. Like all of Peter Doig's great works, White Creep can be viewed on many levels. Confronted by this giant image of apparently impending danger, the viewer feels implanted into the landscape like no artist has managed before. The lavish texture radiates from the painting's surface as the snow becomes almost tangible and ultimately, one feels a poignant sense of stillness and calm.