John Heywood-Waddington embraces the traditions and tropes of Western art history, cinematic devices such as the split-screen, poetic sensibilities and photographic references in his work. His paintings suggest narratives through their expressive movement and rhythm, yet remain open to the viewer’s interpretation. Heywood-Waddington prizes the materiality of paint equally with the subject matter of his work. Working from representational photographic references, collages and drawings, Heywood-Waddington incorporates energetic brushwork in a performative painting process to create an interplay between abstraction and figuration in his paintings. 

Juxtaposing two apparently unrelated images, or splicing them together in collage, is analogous, for me, to an editorial process as well as to the way that a poet often uses two incongruous words to produce an unexpected hybrid image, eliciting a connection in the reader’s mind that can’t necessarily be rationalised.