In his final year at University Charles Booth-Clibborn published The Scottish Bestiaryunder his imprint The Paragon Press. Booth-Clibborn had invited the Orkney born writer George Mackay Brown to produce texts, in the form of poetry and prose, to accompany 20 prints by Scottish artists depicting 19 animals – real and mythological. Howson was at first unsure how to represent the stag. But following a visit to a pub in Aberdeen where he saw a stag’s head hanging from the wall was able to resolve the quandary and bring together two hackneyed images of Scotland: the stag and whisky.

Further reading:
Contemporary Art in Print, Scottish National Gallery of Modern and The Paragon Press, 1995, texts by Jeremy Lewison, Duncan Macmillan and Patrick Elliott