Oliver Spencer on 'Cricket Painting (Paragrand)' by Peter Doig
‘Cricket Painting reminds me of when I was a boy who used to really enjoy playing cricket on the beach with friends and family — it brings back such happy memories. I love the vivid colours in the picture, which reflects the diversity of a game that’s played in many countries around the world now.
'This goes hand-in-hand with my love of travel. Last year, I started a travel business for people who like to have adventures and tell stories — an amazing project that has helped me to live out my dreams. When the tide goes out, the stumps come up.’
Oliver Spencer is the founder of clothing brand Favourbrook and the online travel site Secret Trips
Charlotte Mullins comments on 'Cricket Painting (Paragrand)'
Peter Doig’s dreamlike canvases of isolated figures and buildings in pulsating landscapes are highly sought after. His 1990 painting Swamped sold at auction two years ago for $39 million (about £31 million). Although his early work was often based on his Canadian childhood, since 2002 he increasingly painted Trinidadian scenes. He lived on the Caribbean island for nearly 20 years before returning to Britain in 2021 (Mr Doig had been born in Edinburgh and studied in London).
In Cricket Painting, we see a game of grassroots cricket (or, more accurately, wind ball) held on a Trinidad beach. The bowler is following through as a tennis ball sails towards the batter. A wicket keeper stands some way behind him, dissolving into the vibrant orange sand and licks of blue sea. As in all Mr Doig’s work, the subject matter and the surface of the painting have a symbiotic relationship. Grass, beach and sky become flat, coloured shapes; the wicket keeper seeps into the paint like a memory.
The bowler appears as if in shadow, an aura of lime-green paint dripping down around his upper body. The ball hurtles across the vivid sand, a hot mix of fluorescent paint and cadmium orange: ‘I want the colour to sear into your eyes, burn into the retinas,’ Mr Doig says, ‘fuse the image into the back of your head when you look at it.’ He works from preparatory drawings and photographs, but, ultimately, each painting is a distillation of a past event, reformed on the canvas like a hallucinogenic dream.
Sporting Life: Botham, Gower and 17 pints on rest days – a look at cricket in the 80s, through the eyes of Derek Pringle
Pushing the Boundaries: Cricket in the Eighties contains the reminiscences of Derek Pringle reflecting on his years in the world
Alastair Cook on cricket and farming: 'Nature, like international sport, can be simultaneously cruel and wonderful'
-
Five frankly enormous mansions, including one with its own private swimming lake, as seen in Country LifeSometimes bigger really is better.
-
Playing the fool: The rich history of tarot and how it satisfies our desire for transcendenceOnce an elaborate art form that entertained 15th-century Italian nobility, tarot cards have evolved into a tool of divination. A new exhibition shines a light on their history.
-
'As a child I wanted to snuggle up with the dogs and be part of it': Alexia Robinson chooses her favourite paintingAlexia Robinson, founder of Love British Food, chooses an Edwin Landseer classic.
-
The Pre-Raphaelite painter who swapped 'willowy, nubile women' for stained glass — and created some of the best examples in BritainThe painter Edward Burne-Jones turned from paint to glass for much of his career. James Hughes, director of the Victorian Society, chooses a glass masterpiece by Burne-Jones as his favourite 'painting'.
-
'I can’t look away. I’m captivated': The painter who takes years over each portrait, with the only guarantee being that it won't look like the subjectFor Country Life's My Favourite Painting slot, the writer Emily Howes chooses a work by a daring and challenging artist: Frank Auerbach.
-
My Favourite Painting: Rob HouchenThe actor Rob Houchen chooses a bold and challenging Egon Schiele work.
-
My Favourite Painting: Jeremy Clarkson'That's why this is my favourite painting. Because it invites you to imagine'
-
The chair of the National Gallery names his favourite from among the 2,300 masterpieces — and it will come as a bit of a shockAs the National Gallery turns 200, the chair of its board of trustees, John Booth, chooses his favourite painting.
-
'A wonderful reminder of what the countryside could and should be': The 200-year-old watercolour of a world fast disappearingChristopher Price of the Rare Breed Survival Trust on the bucolic beauty of The Magic Apple Tree by Samuel Palmer, which he nominates as his favourite painting.
-
My favourite painting: Andrew Graham-Dixon'Lesson Number One: it’s the pictures that baffle and tantalise you that stay in the mind forever .'
