J. C. Heywood

Since moving from Kingston to Montreal in 2006, J. C. Heywood has pursued painting, applying to it his 40 years of printmaking methodology.

Heywood has worked in a wide variety of print studios in Japan, Germany, France and India, besides Canada. He has extensive experience in terms of exhibition, lecturing, as a juror and as an assessor for universities. In 1995, he began a quilt-making project using his prints as a basis for quilts. A major retrospective of his work titled J. C. Heywood: A Life in Layers was organized by Geraldine Davis with help from Linda Belshaw Beatty for the Burnaby Art Gallery in 2008. His work is in many public collections such as the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa, the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, and the Musée d'Art Moderne de Paris. A full list of the many collections that Heywood's works are in was given in the catalogue for his retrospective in 2008.

Printmaking allows total freedom and control of colour, he believes. Colour is selected through thought and experiment. The nature of printing inks is adaptable and gives options: they can have the "delicate transparency of watercolour, the solid opacity of gouache, the buttery richness of oil paint, the intensity of sign paint, the purity of coloured light filters", he said in 1984.

Heywood grew up in Chesley, Hanover and Galt, Ontario (now Cambridge). He studied at the Ontario College of Art, graduating in 1963. At the Ontario College of Art, he learned woodblock printing with Frederick Hagan; and at the end of his fourth year, screen printing which he immediately recognized as the right medium for him. He initially taught art at high school in Ontario, but went on to study etching with Stanley William Hayter at Atelier 17 in Paris from 1967 to 1969. There, he learned a new way of working, technically and aesthetically, from his formal art training at the College. In 1974, he began teaching printmaking at Queen's University at Kingston, working there with Otis Tamasauskas from 1980 on. Among his many students was Julie Voyce. He retired in 2006 to become a Queen’s University Professor Emeritus as he continued to explore and gain new skills through new technologies.

J. C. Heywood or Carl Heywood (born 1941) is a master printmaker, painter, fibre artist and teacher of printmaking whose work has been shown across North America and Europe