Peter Doig: Early Works review 'A show all would-be artists should visit'

Michael Werner Gallery, London
In laying bare his first pieces, the British painter reveals how he bubbled over with excitement in his student days and teaches a valuable lesson in how artists can find their signature style

It takes a special kind of courage for a famous artist to drag 40-year-old apprentice pieces out of the attic and make an exhibition of them. Yet that is exactly what the celebrated painter Peter Doig has done for his new show Early Works.

How early? Many of these paintings and drawings, Doig reveals as we contemplate a sketch of a car with Michelangelo's David as a hood ornament, were done when he was a student at St Martin's art college in London in the early 1980s. "It was a great time to be studying painting", he remembers, with the 1981 exhibition unleashing free, figurative, "neo-expressionist" art and a feeling that anything was possible.