The Thought from Outside: An Inquiry into the Art and Artefacts of John Heward

M. Wayne Cunningham, formerly the director of Academic and Career
Programs at East Kootenay Community College, is a freelance writer
specializing in the arts in Kamloops, British Columbia.

In this slim volume of four essays, four thematic appendices, and 57
black-and-white photographs, James D. Campbell critiques the work of the
Montreal painter, maskmaker, and sculptor John Heward. “Heward’s
work,” Campbell writes, “demonstrates a remarkable continuity of
vision that is hard to reconcile with the relative dearth of criticism
devoted to it.”

Entirely self-taught, Heward has created a range of artifacts, from his
rayon sheets with ink-and-pigment-stained water; to his acrylics; to his
masks; to his wood, iron, bronze, steel plate, and aluminum sculptures.
In creating this oeuvre, Campbell concludes, “Heward provided a body
of work that arguably represents one of the most uncompromising
meditations on modernism

ever undertaken by a Canadian artist.” To support this conclusion, he
discusses not only Heward’s work but also the artist’s own
well-documented views about the larger contextual issues of artmaking,
ethics, time and space, and critical interpretations of works of art. In
addition, he touches upon the influences on Heward’s art, which have
included Zen, African ritual art, Tibetan Buddhist paintings, and High
Anglican liturgical art.

It’s unfortunate that there are not more direct quotes from Heward
and that only black-and-white photographs of his work are included.
Nevertheless, for readers interested in Canadian art, this is a
rewarding volume about an artist whose “art is a virtuoso playing of
possible notes in possible registers.”