Artist Peter Doig in his studio 1993 | Archive | National Museums Liverpool

It's a painting of my brother. The photograph that I based the picture on suggested someone being absorbed by a landscape, maybe also being absorbed by their own thoughts, maybe. But also, the actual process of the painting was very, very much to do with soaking painting, painting over quite a long period of time. And I think all the three things came together to sort of suggest this title. First of all, I'd made a painting in the past called Pond Life, which had figures walking on ice. But it was an imaginary painting, really. I mean, it was all invented. Whereas this one, I wanted to have more reality in it. So I actually had him stand on the ice. And we found that the ice wasn't really reflective enough. So we pumped water onto the ice to get the reflection. So it has a feeling almost of someone floating or maybe almost standing on water. I think he was actually just sort of testing the ice to see if it was strong enough to stand on at this particular point. Somehow, that seemed to be the pose that was best for what I wanted, really. These are the photographs that I based the painting on. I mean, I stretched the landscape above by cutting the photograph and collaging it just to sort of stretch it out. And I sort of exaggerated the reflection. I mean, I was quite interested in the way sort of reflections or pools have been used in films, like, say, Orphée, Cocteau's Orphée, where that is sort of the entrance to another world, really. And it's through sort of looking. And sometimes you actually get sent back. And other times, you actually can go through.