The Thought from Outside explores the work of Montreal avant-garde artist John Heward. James D. Campbell investigates his abstract practice of the last several decades and argues that he is one of the few artists of his generation to broach significant issues of being and knowing in the framework of a gestural abstraction. The text discusses both the artist's painting and sculpture and shows that this artist has habitually eschewed traditional ways of making and thinking about art. Campbell shows that, in Heward's suggestive paintings of the glance, the sheer presence of the mark heralds a return to what is perhaps the most basic source of all painting: the primordial need to express what is in mind to say through the medium of the hand.

James D. Campbell's profile page

James D. Campbell is a distinguished writer on art and an independent curator living in Montreal. He is the author of After Geometry: The Abstract Art of Claude Toussignant and Depth Markers: Selected Art Writings 1985–1994.

"For readers interested in Canadian art, this is a rewarding volume about an artist whose ‘art is a virtuoso playing of possible notes in impossible registers.’" — Canadian Book Review Annual