Woking, The Lightbox, The Ingram Collection: The Human Face, 22 July – 28 September 2008;
Woking, The Lightbox, The Ingram Collection: Dreams and Nightmares, 22 May – 15 July 2012;
Aberystwyth, Aberystwyth Arts Centre, The Human Face, 27 January – 12 March 2016
Peter Howson’s controversial large-format paintings typically show massive, predominantly male figures, drawn with muscular brush strokes which illustrate a bleak, harsh and unredemptive view of the modern world. His work as the official British War Artist in Bosnia, involving visits there in 1993, provided him with a highly charged subject-matter that renewed the direction and motivation to his work. The figure of the man is stripped naked, and looking fearfully towards the heat of an industrial inferno, a huge furnace belching smoke into the night sky, reminiscent of scenes from the birth of the industrial revolution.
