Peter Howson OBE (born 1958) is a Scottish painter. He was an official war artist in the 1993 Bosnian Civil War.
Peter Howson was born in London and moved with his family to Prestwick, Ayrshire, when Howson was aged four. He spent a short time as an infantry soldier in the Royal Highland Fusiliers but left to study at the Glasgow School of Art in 1979 where he worked alongside contemporaries such as Adrian Wiszniewski, Steven Campbell and Ken Currie, who also worked in figurative art.
His work has encompassed a number of themes. His early works are typified by very masculine working class men, most famously in The Heroic Dosser (1987). Later he was the official war artist for the Bosnian civil war in 1993. Here he produced some of his most shocking and controversial work detailing the atrocities which were taking place at the time. One painting in particular Croatian and Muslim, detailing a rape created controversy partly because of its explicit subject matter but also because Howson had painted it from the accounts of its victims rather than witnessing it firsthand. Much of his work cast stereotypes on the lower social groups; he portrayed brawls including drunken, even physically deformed men and women.
In recent years his work has exhibited a strong religious theme which some say is linked to the treatment of his alcoholism and drug addiction at the Castle Craig Hospital in Peebles in 2000, after which he converted to Christianity.[1] Howson also has Asperger syndrome.[1]
His work has appeared in other media, with his widest exposure arguably for a British postage stamp he did in 1998 to celebrate engineering achievements for the millennium, which allegedly infuriated The Queen as her head seemed to be appearing out of a chimney. In addition his work has been used on album covers by Live (Throwing Copper), The Beautiful South (Quench) and Jackie Leven (Fairytales for Hardmen).
His work is exhibited in many major collections and is in the private collection of celebrities such as David Bowie, Mick Jagger and Madonna who inspired a number of paintings in 2002.[1]
Howson was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the 2009 Birthday Honours
The Madness of Peter Howson, BBC Four, review
Benji Wilson reviews The Madness of Peter Howson, BBC Four's profile of the painter who was driven to the edge of his sanity by an art commission, plus Misfits, the Asbo teen superhero drama on E4.
Artist Peter Howson, who has autism, is the subject of the BBC documentary The Madness of Peter Howson, which shows how a commission drove him to the edge of bankruptcy and his sanity. Photo: BBC
Blame Van Gogh’s ear, or Blake and his angels in trees, or just about anything to do with Caravaggio, but we tend to like our artists a little bit wacko. Inverting the premise, artists who are financially astute, wear Boden slacks and smile politely wind up as illustrators. A little torment makes a better picture. Which is why last night’s documentary on BBC Four about the Glaswegian artist Peter Howson, whose pugnacious, almost cartoony figurations are so beloved of aesthetes like Madonna and David Bowie, was titled The Madness of Peter Howson.
Howson has suffered from drug and alcohol addiction and was diagnosed last year with Asperger’s syndrome. But in fact, Howson’s madness, if indeed any of that constitutes madness, was by far the least interesting thing about the film. Had it been titled Peter Howson Paints a Picture no one would have watched it, but ironically, the best bits were the ones where we got to watch the painter painting.
No child of the Eighties can forget the wonder of watching Rolf Harris pom-ti-pom-ti-pom-ing a blank canvas into a recognisable image with a few casual slaps of paint. It should remind us that the very best thing television can do with art, that an art gallery can’t, is to show how it is created
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00w57gt/The_Madness_of_Peter_Howson/
