Artlyst interview: Peter Howson

A central member of the group of young artists to emerge from the Glasgow School of Art during the 1980s dubbed the New Glasgow Boys, Peter Howson has become one of his generation’s leading figurative painters. In his current exhibition with Flowers Gallery, Howson uses his apocalyptic vision of violence and inhumanity to explore his fears of contemporary radical right-wing politics.

Howson is unusual among mainstream artists in his unashamed use of traditional religious iconography and application of a Trinitarian framework to his artistic practice.

I have interviewed him for Artlyst and have also reviewed Acta Est Fabula, his current exhibition. The interview can be found here and the review here.

Howson says: 'I want my paintings to reveal to the onlooker the folly of believing in some kind of scientific utopia that we are all heading towards. We embraced death in the past, but cannot do it now. We knew the darkness in our hearts in times past, and we feared judgement.'

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