Peter Doig's Painting 'Ski Jacket' 1994

Detail from Ski Jacket by Peter Doig

I recently went up to the Tate Modern where I saw Peter Doig's painting entitled the Ski Jacket.

Title: Ski Jacket - Date: 1994 Medium: Oil paint on 2 canvases

Dimensions Support, right: 2953 x 1604 x 33 mm support, left: 2950 x 1900 x 33 mm

On display at Tate Modern - Theme: Level 4: Media Networks - Room: Painting and Mass Media (Room 12)

 

Looking at the mark making I was inspired by the range of marks but also interested by the fact that this image was not as thickly painted as I previously thought. There were blobs of thick paint here and there deliberately placed as if sculptural features and the main body of the paint was a complex mix of brush strokes where the detail was secondary. This painting is massive and meant to be view from a distance where the detail blurs.

 

There is obviously a lot of white in this painting being based on a photograph of a ski slope.  Seen here in the detail are the out of focus public on the ski slope. Working this from a photograph probably meant that Doig actually had no detail to work from and was working with a gestural process where as shape would indicate a body position.This is an interesting concept that we was in fact painting something where the detail was absent.

 

The layers of paint are obviously worked and reworked and the colours often subtitle. It's this level of reworking though that comes through and creates a massive swirling vortex of shape and colour.