Peter Doig
2019
Pigment on linen
70 x 81.5 cm
Trinidad’s rich musical culture often feeds into Peter Doig’s paintings. Here, he imagines a musical scene set close to his home on the island with calypso singers serenading a woman passing by on a donkey. The woman is Doig’s wife, the curator Parinaz Mogadassi. The musician on the left is loosely based on a painting by Doig’s friend Embah (Emheyo Bahabba, 1937–2015). In the centre, an imaginary calypso player is depicted wearing the
stage clothes of The Rockafellas, an early 1960s Trinidadian group. The painting was inspired by a poem by another of Doig’s friends, the celebrated poet Derek Walcott (1930–2017). It contains the line: ‘where else have you heard such music, such great noise?’ Doig’s pigments subtly bleed into one another as if this idyllic vision might soon melt away.