Peter Howson was born in London in 1958. He moved to Ayrshire and his adopted Scottish homeland in 1962
Howson attended the Glasgow School of Art studying under James Robertson . Influences on his paintings have included: Picasso and Cubism, Salvador Dali and Surrealism, and the Old Masters Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo.
Peter Howson came to prominence in the 1980s alongside contemporaries such as Adrian Wiszniewski, Ken Currie and Stephen Campbell who were known collectively as the Glasgow Boys - a New Glasgow Boys movement. Many of his paintings derive inspiration from the streets of Glasgow, where he was brought up. He is renowned for his penetrating and vigorous insight into the human condition, and his heroic portrayals of the mighty and meek. He produces dramatic figurative paintings that use line and colour in an expressive and powerful manner. Howson's paintings of Glasgow's down-and-outs and misfits gained him a vast amount of public and media attention and polarised opinions.
In 1993 Howson was appointed by the Imperial War Museum as the Official British War Artist for Bosnia. He recorded the horror of the bloody conflict in the former Yugoslavia. This inevitably challenging and disturbing work provoked controversy when it was subsequently exhibited. After being exhibited in London, the Bosnian collection was shown at the Paris Art Fair in 1997 to great acclaim.
He has exhibited highly publicised works of Queen Elizabeth II and pop figurehead Madonna, as well as powerful biblical images of 'The Stations of the Cross'.
Howson's list of many past exhibitions, awards and scholarships include an Honorary Doctorate, awarded by the Scottish University of Strathclyde, a Henry Moore Foundation Prize and a Royal Mail commission for a Millennium Stamp.
Today Peter Howson paintings are in numerous art collections across the world. His list of collectors include: Madonna and David Bowie.
"Peter Howson's work tends to arrest you in your tracks; it grabs you by the throat and then leaves you feeling quite different to the way you were before. His bodies flow in a horrendous voluptuous twist of flesh, like think-coded branches of trees. They seem almost torn out of the earth itself; it's as if they were heaved from its bowels. He paints in a style that reminds you of Breughel and William Blake, using terrible mythic figures as he puts the modern world into his fables." - Steven Berkoff 2002
Today Peter Howson has established a formidable reputation as one of the leading contemporary figurative painters of his generation
