peter howson

ALAN JACKSON –
an excerpt from ‘A Different Man’
Peter Howson’s powerful figurative work has made him one of the foremost British artists of his generation. His heroic portrayals of the dossers and down-and-outs, misfits and hard men of his home town in Glasgow may have polarised political opinion, but they nevertheless caught the public and media imagination sufficiently to make him a celebrity in his own right; his paintings were bought by the world’s leading galleries and collected by a starry list of private clients, including Madonna and David Bowie.

In the longer term, though, Howson admits success dulled his creative impulse. By his mid-thirties, and despite his enviable international standing, he felt deeply unhappy, ‘as if afflicted by a sickness of the soul’. It was a commission in 1992 to record the horror and futility of the bloody conflict in the former Yugoslavia that gave him a sharp new perspective.

AWARDS AND SCHOLARSHIPS 1979 – present
1979 Hospitalfield Scholarship
1986 Prizewinner, Scottish Drawing Competition, Paisley Art Galleries
Arthur Andersen & Co. Purchase Prize, Mayfest, Glasgow
Edwin Morgan Artists’ Prize, Glasgow League
1988 Henry Moore Foundation Prize
1992 Eastward Publication Prize, RGI, McLellan Galleries, Glasgow
Nomination for Lord Provost Prize at RGI, McLellan Galleries, Glasgow
European Young Artists Prize, Sophia, Belgrade
1995 Lord Provost Prize 1995, Glasgow
1996 Awarded Doctor of Letters Honoras Cause, University of Strathclyde
1997 Lord Provost Prize 1998, Glasgow
Royal Mail Millennium Stamp Commission