Whether painting a mysterious bearded figure floating on a flat wash of blue or a winter landscape glimpsed through a thick web of branches, Peter Doig harnesses the materiality of his medium to create what he calls 'abstractions of memories', distilling recollected sensations into moments of pure sentience, likescenes in a series of mysterious narratives. In Gasthof zur Muldentalsperre (2000-2) two costumed figures stand guard at a low stone wall while behind them a reservoir reflects a twinkling starry sky. The young man bundled up against the cold in Blotter (1993) contemplates his reflection in a frozen pond, while in Red Boat (Imaginary Boys) (2004) six men in white shirts navigate upstream through a dense tropical landscape. Doig's work has been exhibited at the world's top museums, including The Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Centre Pompidou in Paris and the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa, and has been selected for contemporary art's most important international ex