ARTIST Peter Howson has revealed how music legend David Bowie spent hours sitting for portrait sketches, yet never received any of the drawings.
Instead the Glasgow-based artist bundled up his collection of Bowie sketches so his ex-wife could sell them at an auction with the proceeds going towards paying for a house for his autistic daughter.
Speaking in an interview with former Bishop of Edinburgh Richard Holloway on Radio Scotland yesterday, the troubled artist said he invited the musician to pose for him after discovering he had bought one of his most controversial Bosnian war paintings.
But despite the singer being one of Howson’s biggest celebrity fans, he left the sittings empty handed.
“The blunt honest truth is that I never gave him any drawings at all, I probably should have,” he admitted. “I put them all into an auction to buy Lucy, my daughter, a house.”
Bowie, who died in January 2016 aged 69, was a prolific art collector and included two Peter Howson works in his collection. He was also an enthusiastic supporter of the late John Bellany and a regular visitor to Port Seton in East Lothian where Bellany grew up.
The collection of ten Bowie drawings was sold in 2013. The works fetched a total of £35,000, five times their estimate.
Howson, who has struggled with mental illness and depression, also revealed how he was tortured by violent visions from the age of just four years old that left him fearing for his sanity throughout his childhood.
The 59-year-old said: “The only way to handle the stuff coming through me was to work. I don’t think it has ever left me.”
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