The bottom half of this work is so intensely captivating that at first we fail to see that the trees and bracken landscape high above the slope, are about as lifelike as the reflected life the boy ponders beneath him. An easy mistake to make however considering the entrancing perplexity of the narrative on display. Doig’s far off capture of contemplation showing both the boy reflective of his own image and thoughts, but also reflective of ourselves as we too scour the meditative image before us. We’re watching him watch himself, which gives an odd intimacy. ‘Blotter’ seems aware of this, referring within its title both to, as Doig put it, ‘the notion of being absorbed into a place, but also to the process through which the painting developed: soaking paint into the canvas’. There is exquisite skill throughout; the water forming a delicate swirl of distortions, masterfully mixing both the reflections themselves from elsewhere in the image, as well as the moments in which these echoes intersperse and spill. The very weather of the scene is dealt with equally well, small nicks and white thumbing against the frame suggesting old reel footage, evoking a place out of time. Logic reigns in the ordering of the presentation here, with everything coming across horizontal in bands of colour. The boy skewered between two certainties amid his contemplation. The lower portion featuring the exuberance of another life, the higher middle a jagged depthless quality to a reality of ours. [https://kweiseye.wordpress.com/2014/09/13/peter-doig-1959/]