JOHN HEWARD | RECENT WORK

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John Heward, "PAINTING #8," 2017

oil and acrylic on canvas, 20" x 24"

Paul Kuhn Gallery presents an exhibition of recent paintings by Montreal artist, John Heward.

Born in 1934, Heward has been making art for more than 50 years as a painter, sculptor, and musician. He was awaded the Borduas Prize for visual arts by the Quebec Government in 2012. Not only as a painter, Heward is recognized internationally in the circle of free jazz as an Emeritus percussionist. Currently he lives and works in Montreal with fellow artist, Sylvia Safdie. Throughout his prestiguos career, the artist has enjoyed more than 40 solo exhibitions, notably in Paris, London, Chicago, New York, Calgary and San Diego.

Heward’s art spans art historical categories. Emerging as an artist in his 30’s, he is largely self taught. Having little formal training and few pre-conceptions, he was able to experiment freely. His work is at once - graceful and brutal, fierce and delicate. This play between tension and release is a central dichotomy to his work.This new exhibition will include new black/white paintings, works on paper and recto-verso paintings on rayon which can hang on wall, lie across the floor or be suspended from the ceiling.

The new works include twelve small scale paintings which consist of swatches of white colour against a black layered background. The apparent simplicity of the work echoes the gestures of Franz Kline or primitive cave painting. Heward’s work is seductively ambiguous in its imagery, often calligraphic in the markings and use of cultural forms and resistant to definite interpretation.

In Heward’s own words he states: My making is very much a blend between abstract expressionismin the largest sense, not just the painting sense, and minimalismin the visual sense, almost the formal sense of minimal object, what it can mean.