Heron was highly acclaimed as a writer as well as an artist, and respected by his contemporaries for being able to articulate art from the perspective of a practitioner. His writing about art began in 1945 when he was invited by Philip Mairet, editor of "The New English Weekly", to contribute to the journal. His first published article, on Ben Nicholson, was written while Heron was still at Leach Pottery. This was soon followed by essays on Picasso, Klee, Cézanne and Braque. Within the next two years Heron began broadcasting a series of talks on contemporary art on the BBC World Service and the newly founded Third programme, and wrote regularly for "New Statesman". In 1955, he became London Correspondent to Arts Digest, New York (later renamed "Arts(NY)"), and in the same year a selection of his criticism was published by Routledge as "The Changing Forms of Art". In 1958, Heron took a "vow of silence" as a critic, giving up his regular columns as he said he wanted to be a painter who wrote, not a writer who paints.