Canadian contemporary artist J. Carl Heywood had a prolific career as print maker for over sixty years. After the sudden death of his father, fourteen-year-old Heywood realized that life was too short to not pursue ones dreams and aspiration. After high school, his friends and family helped raise funds for him to attend art school as he aspired for a bigger, brighter future. In 1959, Heywood entered the Ontario College of Art (OCA) where he received traditional fine art training. In turn, he developed a love for art, drawing and technical virtuosity. However, the lack of conceptual strategies prompted him to seek them elsewhere. After four years of painting and teaching in the small Ontario region, he traveled to Montreal looking for a ship to France. Hayter’s "Atelier 17", a print workshop founded in Paris in 1927 became his destination.
Heywood arrived in Paris by the late 1960’s; a time of student demonstrations, radical politics and sexual experimentation. He acquired a studio from artist Madelaine Young and setup his own printmaking facility which he would use at night. During the day, he worked at Hayter’s atelier on rue Daguerre where he learnt a complicated series of etching techniques and inking processes. His training at Atelier 17 gave Heywood new options and aesthetic alternatives to his formal OCA training; transforming the provincial amateur into an accomplished professional.
Heywood has exhibited his prints internationally in Berlin, Taiwan, Norway, Yugoslavia, Poland, China and New Mexico. His prints are part of permanent collections in over twenty-three different museums worldwide; the New York Metropolitan Museum, the MOMA, the AGO and the "Musée d’art moderne de Paris", among others.
Heywood’s production style may be described as a sustained study of visual language. He composes his creations in a musical way; with tension and repose, arrangements of line and shape, chords and nuances of colour, tonalities of dark and light, shallow and deep space, contrast and harmony, varieties of texture and of treatment. Since the 1970's, he pursued these formal concerns often with still life imagery whether it be through etching, lithography, screen printing or digital means.
With regards to his painting techniques, which he only entertained once retired in 2006, the artist begins with a collage and/or constructions, which are then digitally transferred onto the canvas. These compositional foundations evolve in different ways as they are developed into painted images by enhancing them with acrylic mediums. Heywood’s artistic process satisfies his endless curiosity, his need for invention and his desire for exploration of the image in progress.
