JOHN HEYWOOD-WADDINGTON

ARTIST STATEMENT
Embracing the traditions and tropes of Western art history, my practice is influenced and informed by poetic and cinematic devices, references and sensibilities. My paintings are about movement, rhythm and intensity of feeling and, though there is a suggested narrative, the viewer is invited to draw their own conclusions. Figures look off into the distance or, with their backs turned, are depicted about to face the unknown future.
I prize the materiality and physicality of paint as much as the subject matter. In a sense, the paint becomes the subject. My work usually originates in representational imagery, derived from photo references, collages and drawings - among other source material. There’s always the impulse to disrupt and reimagine the familiar through the performative action of painting.
If there is another narrative at play it is that of the performance and catharsis of painting - the vivid, energetic brushwork and interplay between abstract and figurative languages attesting to my experience of making the paintings.