Interview: Peter Howson

By Bill Hare, 09.06.2023

Portrait of Peter Howson at Flowers Gallery, Cork Street, London in 2021 in front of his painting Phlegethon (The Fiery Third River of Hell), 2021, Image courtesy of the City Arts Centre

PH: When I was at Glasgow School of Art, David Donaldson was in charge of the Painting Department. I liked him a lot and he taught me more about painting than many of the other tutors. I was in awe of him and also a bit scared, but behind his back a few of my friends did comical impressions of him, which I loved. Even today I still chuckle and smile when I think back to these happy times.

One of his many sayings was, "When the apple ripens... don't f...ing pry". None of us knew exactly what he meant, but it left an impression on me. I don't want to explain what I think is the meaning of Dr. Donaldson's saying. Strangely however, it has helped me in my art and my life.

BH: I believe your retrospective covers 40 years of your career with over 100 exhibits in different media- many on an epic scale. This will also include some of your art student work from the later 1970s. Would it be fair to say that your period at Glasgow School of Art, especially with the teaching  of Sandy Moffat, has had a lasting influence on your development as an artist?

PH: Sandy Moffat appeared when I was in my third year. I didn't take to him at first. I was embarrassed by the lack of content and quality in my work, and also by my stupid attitude. One day he was going through my rubbish selection of drawings and discovered one I had done in the army. This was the turning point for me. He opened a door for me and encouraged me to concentrate on building up a body of work from my experience in the army. Sandy introduced me to the German Expressionists, classical music and opera. This made me feel I could become an artist. From then on I became serious about painting and lived it completely!

BH: You came to prominence in the later 1980s, along with your fellow GSA contemporaries- Campbell, Currie and Wiszniewski, after the great critical and popular acclaim for the famous New Image Glasgow exhibition (1985), curated by Sandy Moffat. Your work was very much rooted in Glasgow and its denizens, most memorably with your picture, The Heroic Dosser (1987), which is one of the star attractions of this retrospective. Why has Glasgow continued to be so central to your work?

PH: A young curator came up to me in 1989 and said "Peter, you'll always be a parochial artist. You don't have that international quality." I think in some ways, although it hurt at the time, he was right. I have never really broken through into the "big time" as they say. My list of collectors and fans is strong, but limited. I love Glasgow and its people; even when I lived in London during the nineties. I felt homesick. I have everything I want here in Glasgow. All the inspiration is here on the streets. I live in a small, rented flat, always short of money, but always hungry to draw and paint. I am content now, sober and stable.

BH: You then joined Flowers Gallery and quickly went on to become an international celebrity, through your association with famous show business collectors. Did all that media attention have an adverse effect on the development of your work?

PH: I don't think I am "an international celebrity". Most of the time in the past I was in the newspapers for doing stupid or controversial things. I tended to make bad decisions and I don't really know why. I've survived however, I am still working and I feel blessed.

The media attention did have a negative effect on my work, making it uneven in artistic quality. John Bellany paid me a great compliment when he said, "We are both like volcanoes spewing out a lot of rubbish and energy but, now and then, a gem!"

The showbiz stuff did turn my head and I wasted a lot of time chasing a kind of lifestyle which nearly destroyed my sanity. I was ill for five or six years between 2008 and 2014. I don't remember much about it. Nearly all my family and friends thought I was finished. I don't however, regret that period now, because it brought me to my senses.

BH: A whole section of this retrospective is devoted to the work you produced as a war artist in Bosnia in 1993. What effect did that experience have on you and your art?

PH: Bosnia had a great impact on my work. The experience shocked me to the core. My family disintegrated after I came back, but that was my fault and I can't blame Bosnia for that.

I did have serious mental issues after my time in Bosnia and started drinking more heavily and again became addicted to cocaine. Between 1998 and 2014 I was treated in four different psychiatric hospitals; one for over a year. On the other hand, I probably produced my best work.

I have to admit I have often slipped into the dangerous game of repeating "bestsellers" and working just to get money. That is never a comfortable feeling.

BH: After your visits to Bosnia and Kosovo you went through a period of great personal trauma and artistic crisis, but out of that you experienced a religious conversion to the Christian faith. How did this impact your art?

PH: I've always been a believer. During my childhood and into my teens, I had several visions or spiritual experiences. After a strange and traumatic near-death experience in Kosovo, I went to pieces and ended up in Castle Craig clinic, near Peebles and there I had my conversion.

I became transfixed on the third step of Alcoholics Anonymous and started painting subjects related to alcohol and drugs, depravity and redemption. I did many commissions for two collectors of religious art. When I was ill again in 2008, I still managed to continue to work on a large series of biblical paintings for a collector abroad, totalling twenty-five large canvases.

BH: Much of the subject matter and inspiration of your later work in this retrospective is drawn from Biblical scripture and the lives of the saints. Do you now consider yourself primarily as a religious artist?

PH: One of my closest friends, a minister in the Church, described me as an evangelical painter. There is a lot of truth in that. I really enjoy painting religious art, even though it is unpopular with most collectors. In fact, I like being called a religious artist.

My aim is to make non-religious people ask questions about good and evil, pain and suffering, judgement and the purpose of life. I apologise if this all sounds a bit pathetic. I always feel empty when I talk or write about these things, I'd rather put them into my painting.

BH: To finish on a more general note, you are on record as saying, "Too much art of today is an intellectual game. Art needs to communicate in a way that doesn't need too much explanation. It is an open door into the wonder and mystery of existence." That seems to have a strong transforming, evangelical ring to it. Do you hope that visitors to your retrospective might have a life-changing experience?

PH: I have found that many of the people who like my work, find it life-changing, especially those on the outside of society. My work has changed people. They have told me that it is like a conversion experience for them. They see everything in a new way. Life has a new meaning. It is not just a journey towards death, but now the journey has a destination and a new beginning.

So, I do hope that visitors to my retrospective exhibition will come away feeling a bit shell shocked. I have always wanted my art to be powerful and to move people in a way that they have to confront their ideas about what it is to be alive.

There is no such thing as progress. We are no better than our ancestors. In fact, there is good evidence that our civilisation is more murderous and decadent than any before it. What is it all about? That is what I want my art to ask the viewer.

When the Apple Ripens by Peter Howson is exhibited at the City Art Centre until 1 October

https://www.edinburghmuseums.org.uk/whats-on/when-apple-ripens-peter-howson-65