Clive Hicks-Jenkins

In 2019 he collaborated with poet Simon Armitage on an illustrated book retelling the story of Hansel and Gretel, published by Design for Today.

Clive Hicks-Jenkins works through the mediums of painting, drawing, printmaking, ceramics, maquettes, animation and artist's books. Nicholas Usherwood in Galleries has described his work as ‘reflective, expressive painting of the highest order’. Robert MacDonald wrote in Planet in 2002, "Hicks-Jenkins has emerged in recent years as one of the most powerful figurative painters in Wales". Since 2010 the artist has discussed his methods in a regular 'Artlog' about his ongoing work.

In 2018 he completed a major project to produce a series of 14 screenprints with the Penfold Press tracing the story of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, based on the 2008 translation of the medieval poem by Simon Armitage. The images were set alongside Armitage's text in the Revised Illustrated Edition published in 2018.

He has produced cover images and text decorations for commercially published books, such as Val/Orson, Thaliad, The Foliate Head, Glimmerglass, Maze of Blood and The Book of the Red King all by Marly Youmans, Star-Shot by Mary-Ann Constantine, Witch and Judas by Damian Walford Davies and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight by Simon Armitage. Poets have been drawn to respond to Hicks-Jenkins' work, as discussed in an essay by Professor Damian Walford Davies. An illustrated anthology was produced in 2011, The Book of Ystwyth: Six Poets on the Art of Clive Hicks-Jenkins.

Hicks-Jenkins has had a working relationship since the mid 1990s with Nicolas and Frances McDowall of the Old Stile Press, a private press in Monmouthshire specialising in collaborations with artists. This resulted in five artist’s books between 1998 and 2009. Two were editions of the Elizabethan poet Richard Barnfield, The Affectionate Shepheard and Sonnets. Two others were written by the contemporary poet Catriona Urquhart, Palmyra Jones and The Mare’s Tale. The most recent is the first illustrated edition of Sir Peter Shaffer’s play Equus.

Clive Hicks-Jenkins (born 1951) is a Welsh artist known especially for narrative paintings and artist's books. His paintings are represented in all the main public collections in Wales, as well as others in the United Kingdom, and his artist's books are found in libraries internationally. A retrospective exhibition comprising some 200 works from across the artist's career loaned from public and private collections was held by the National Library of Wales in 2011 to coincide with his sixtieth birthday. A substantial multi-author book devoted to his work was published by Lund Humphries in 2011, in which Simon Callow called him ‘one of the most individual and complete artists of our time'.

Clive Hicks-Jenkins was born in Newport, south Wales, in 1951. His father worked for the Central Electricity Generating Board and his mother was a hairdresser. He attended Hartridge Comprehensive School in Newport but was unhappy there and at the age of twelve he moved to the Italia Conti school in London, where he studied theatre, worked as an actor in films and television and took classes at the Rambert Ballet School. In the late 1960s he was a performer and puppeteer with Cardiff's Caricature Theatre. During the 1970s and 1980s he worked as a choreographer, director and stage designer, creating productions with among others the Vienna Festival, the Almeida Theatre, Theatr Clwyd and Cardiff New Theatre, where he was Associate Director. Since the 1990s he has concentrated on his work as a visual artist. He contributed a short autobiographical essay to a substantial monograph about his work, Clive Hicks-Jenkins by Simon Callow et al (Lund Humphries, 2011).