One of the most accomplished artists of the last decade, Peter Doig has introduced a new spirit into the genre of narrative painting. His work emanates a quiet nostalgia. Rendered with unsettling perfection, they echo—despite their haunting beauty and magic realism—an impossible stillness within their timeless tranquility.

In Doig’s paintings, perfection is an impossibility except for the fleeting moment where life and death, happiness and tragedy, are one. Working from film stills, found photographs, and references to art history, Doig layers his borrowed imagery in such a way that it asserts the primacy of the painting process. He fills the world of the familiar with uncanny presences by cunningly combining figuration with abstraction, reality with artificiality.