Peter Howson and Joan Eardley Scottish Art Essay

The first artist I will be writing about is Peter Howson. He was born in Ayrshire in the year 1958 and lived there for most of his life. He had a great education as he studied at Glasgow School of Art and then moved to London to finish his Masters Degree. Practically all of his work is based on war. He always uses strong tone and the palette he uses is limited and earthy. The emotion Howson manages to convey in all of his paintings is often dark and depressing which links to the problems he has had with metal health. At no point, in all of Howsons work of which I have seen, does he convey the emotion of happiness. Howson has suffered many mental health issues, some of which have been expressed in his work Howson always uses large brush strokes which give the paintings power, however, he still focuses his detail on certain areas, which are very obvious when looking at his paintings. One such dark painting is “Famine Five”, one of the many paintings Howson produced based on war. It was created in 2009 and is oil on canvas. The figure is a drained looking woman, painted from the chest upwards. This piece is focused on war; Howson has managed to convey the effects of war, by exaggerating the expression on the woman’s face. She looks starved, depressed and tired looking. This is shown through the deep wrinkles in her face and how big and drooping her eyes are. The palette used in this painting is all dark, earthy oranges and a deep blue is used for the background. This contrast between the orange and blue helps the woman stand out from the deep, dull blue sky in the background, making her have an almost orange glow to her skin. The texture Howson has created on the woman is very rough, almost like her features have been scratched. This effect has been created by using a dry paint brush, and what looks like scraping the paint off. This is to show us that she is dirty as you can see her skin has black marks and scuffs all over it. The woman’s face is the focal point,