ARTIST Peter Howson has revealed how the atrocities he witnessed while documenting the war in Bosnia left him doubting his sanity.

As the official war artist to the British Army, the Glasgow-based painter experienced the horrors perpetrated by Ratko Mladic’s forces against Muslims and Croats in an ethnic cleansing campaign.

In a harrowing interview with The National, he has revealed fresh information about his time in Bosnia and its ongoing impact on his life.

This includes horrific violence against women that he describes as “the degradation of humankind”.

Howson, who will show 80 new works at an exhibition opening in Glasgow tomorrow, said his view of the world had been irrevocably changed as a result.

He said: “I don’t have any agenda apart from a love of people. I haven’t always loved people.

“In Bosnia one day there were 150 rape victims and I had to go with these specially trained soldiers into the hills and collect them as part of a deal they had done. It was the day I lost my fear.

“There was a stand-off between us and the Serbian soldiers. They were nasty pieces of work.

“We went to a building, it was like the degradation of humankind. Women were being raped there and then being buried underneath it in some kind of well.

“There was this horrible mixture of rape and sexual stuff and murder going on, and the smell...

“The only way I have dealt with it was to knock back a bottle of cheap homemade rakia. I got so depressed about it and I felt so alone. I was missing my daughter so much and I thought I’d never see her again.

“I honestly thought they were going to kill me.”

Howson, who quit art school to join the Royal Highland Fusiliers, was given the appointment in 1993, one year into the conflict. However, what he saw was so traumatic that he asked to go home without having completed any artwork.

He later returned, and the results include one depiction of a rape that was purchased by David Bowie. It had been rejected by the Imperial War Museum as it was based on testimony, rather than something Howson had witnessed.

On the long-term impact of his experience, Howson said: “Sometimes I doubt my own sanity about things that happened.

“When I went to Bosnia the first time it was a disaster. The second time I kind of lost all my fear and decided to try. It’s almost like a death wish I had.

“It broke up my marriage and it caused me mayhem with my daughter. I promised her that I’d never go anywhere like that again.”

His free Spiritus Mundi show, which focuses on Brexit, will open at the Roger Bilcliffe Gallery in Glasgow tomorrow.

The pieces were created as the artist learned to work with his left hand, having developed an as-yet-undiagnosed condition in his right. Botox treatment failed to cure it and he has now begun physiotherapy.