About

Clive Hicks-Jenkins, RCA, was born in Newport, south Wales, in 1951. The early part of his career was as a choreographer and stage director. In the 1990s he turned away from theatre to concentrate on painting. He has been praised by critics in The Independent, Modern Painters and Art Review. Simon Callow has called him ‘one of the most individual and complete artists of our time' and Nicholas Usherwood in Galleries has described his work as ‘reflective, expressive painting of the highest order.’ 

He has shown regularly with the Martin Tinney Gallery in Cardiff and has had solo exhibitions at Christ Church Picture Gallery in Oxford, the Museum of Modern Art Machynlleth, Newport Museum & Art Gallery, Anthony Hepworth Fine Art, Brecknock Museum, the National Library of Wales and Aberyswyth Arts Centre. His paintings, prints and private press books are in numerous public collections, including the National Museum of Wales, the Glynn Vivian Art Gallery, MoMA Machynlleth, the Contemporary Art Society for Wales, Llandaff Cathedral, Pallant House Gallery and the Methodist Church Collection of Modern Art, as well as private collections and libraries around the world. In 2017 he was awarded an Honorary Doctorate of Arts by Southampton Solent University. 

In 2014 Composer Mark Bowden and poet Damian Walford Davies wrote The Mare's Tale, a work for actor/singer and chamber consort inspired by the artist's series of drawings of the same title. It was premiered in a staged performance designed and directed by Clive Hicks-Jenkins at Theatre Brycheiniog in Brecon, and in 2019 the Berkeley Ensemble made a national tour of concert performances of the work.

In 2017 Goldfield Productions engaged the artist, to direct and design a new version of a fairytale. With music by Matthew Kaner and a libretto by Simon Armitage. Hansel & Gretel: a Nightmare in Eight Scenes was performed by a chamber consort, a narrator/singer and two puppeteers. It premiered at the Cheltenham Music Festival in July 2018 followed by a five month tour of music festivals. A performance at Barbican was recorded by BBC Radio 3 for broadcast in December 2018. Hansel & Gretel was the second collaboration between the artist and Simon Armitage, coming on the heels of Faber & Faber publishing Armitage’s revision of his translation of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight illustrated throughout with fourteen screenprints Hicks-Jenkings made in collaboration with Penfold Press. Armitage’s libretto for Hansel & Gretel: a Nightmare in Eight Scenes was published by Design for Today in Spring of 2019, and in 2020 won Clive Hicks-Jenkins the V&A Illustrated Book Award.

The monograph Clive Hicks-Jenkins was published by Lund Humphries in 2011.