R&D - Leaving things behind, what triggers our ability to connect with something?

I made a review of the artist Peter Doig some time ago, and whilst I was looking for a little inspiration today I came across a short article in the book by Will Gompertz entitled "think like an artist" (2015). On pages 145 to page 149, Gompertz explains how Doig's background and early childhood was quite disrupted through various stays in different countries and even different continents. In his early career Doig struggled to find his own signature of painting, even though he had been given much tuition both in Canada and in London. It was only after his second return to London for further tuition that he realised that his interest in his particular and in some ways peculiar landscape paintings could be further explored in a much more unique and personal way, which related to his Canadian memories of vast panoramas.

In the words of Will Gompertz,

"Doig realised what he had been holding him back, it wasn't moving to a new environment that inspired him but it was actually moving from an old one". 

This was underlined further by direct quote from Peter Doig which was

 "I have to leave somewhere before I can paint it"

This seemed to particularly resonate with me, not only for my own childhood where I too was rather disrupted in my early upbringing and education, having started out life in a very far away place, some 6 to 7000 miles away in Peru, (South America). With an early lifestyle during the 1960s that I could only describe as being almost idyllic for a child, open freedom and a very privileged safety to roam in a remote but industrious textile town / (actually the size of a small village) where everyone knew , who I was, knew our family, (my dad was the factory boss), and it seemed, everyone liked him for bringing wealth and prosperity for them, to quite a deserted place.  My return to the UK at the age of six, did not set me up very well for my later adolescence. It is only now, some 45+ years later, that I realise that this early disruption and uncertainty has probably had a lasting effect in some ways on my own personality. I have felt that I've been a bit of a nomad ever since.  Perhaps I am still searching for something that is lost. Interestingly, it's only recently, in the last couple of years or so, that I now know that I will never find it.

Whatever "it" is, could very well be a sublimated driver for me to express this loss through my art?  With this in mind, my research into "Things left Behind", seems even more pertinent...

(Reference; "Think Like an Artist", Will Gompertz, 2015. Penguin Paperback Books, London.)