An intimate exploration of a single oil painting, revealing the motive and techniques behind the creation of Scottish artist Peter Howson’s monumental Prophecy. With a remarkably acute focus, the film follows the painting’s creation, exhibition and sale, as it travels from the artist’s studio in Glasgow to New York, before returning to London to enter the collection of a private buyer. 

Peter Howson (b.1958) is one of his generation’s leading figurative painters and a central member of the group of young artists to emerge from the Glasgow School of Art during the 1980s, dubbed the New Glasgow Boys. Throughout his career, Howson has interwoven themes of conflict and destruction, human suffering and redemption in his imaginative portrayals of contemporary society.