The work of Glaswegian figurative painter Peter Howson, who first rose to prominence in the 80s and early 90s, tends to be crowded with brawny, thick-limbed figures who are often clustered tightly together in large, dynamic compositions. Drawn to depictions of hedonism and working-class culture in his early days, then to disturbing war scenes when he was appointed Britain’s official war artist for Bosnia in 1993, and now religious subjects since he became sober and embraced Christianity, Howson has a many-layered imagination, embracing multiple strata of art history and frames of visual reference. Even his working process, using oils, lays down paint over paint, redrawing and reworking the figures with expressive strokes and shifting light schemes.
That intense process is revealed without fuss or pretension in Charlie Paul’s documentary, which observes Howson as he paints a large orgiastic canvas called Prophecy, featuring dozens of naked figures whirling around a central crucifixion image. There’s something pleasing about the way Paul strips the film-making back to essentials, embracing an aesthetic austerity that forms a harmonious contrast with the giddy clutter and carnival of Howson’s work.
As viewers, we get to just sit and watch as this imposing figure applies paint and talks in a mellifluous brogue about his own work, that of great artists who have shaped him, his daughter Lucie (featured both in the film and in Prophecy the painting itself), his substance-abuse demons, his own Asperger’s, mermaids, light, shadows, the lot.
And then the painting is packed up, shipped to the Flowers Gallery in New York, where it is bought and taken to London to be part of a private collection – perhaps somewhat to Howson’s chagrin. Throughout, Paul inserts stop-motion footage that allows us to see how the painting evolves and changes over its construction, with characters moving position, changing appearance, disappearing and reappearing in mesmerising fashion. A fascinating watch for anyone interested in modern art.
