Clive Hicks-Jenkins is the winner of the 2020 V&A Illustrated Book Award for Poet Laureate Simon Armitage's narrative poem Hansel & Gretel: a Nightmare in Eight Scenes.
Clive was English Heritage's 2019 selected artist for their theme of 'Telling Tales: The Myths, Legends and Foklore of England. The original artworks are all available to purchase.
Clive's work was selected by Simon Armitage's to accompany the Laurel Poetry Prize and he was awarded the Owain Glyndwr Award for Contributions to the Arts 2019.
Clive Hicks-Jenkins 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 shows regularly with the Martin Tinney Gallery in Cardiff and the Tegfryn Gallery in Menai Bridge, 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. He is a Royal Cambrian Academician and an Honorary Fellow of Aberystwyth University School of Art. In 2017 he was awarded an Honorary Doctorate of Arts by Southampton Solent University.
In 2016 Random Spectacular published Hick's-Jenkins dark reworking of Hansel & Gretel into a picture book, and recently Benjamin Pollock's Toyshop in Covent Garden published a toy theatre kit based on it. 2018 saw the completion of his fourteen print series inspired by Simon Armitage's translation of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.
Collections
National Museum & Galleries of Wales; National Library of Wales; Pallant House Art Gallery, Chichester; Glynn Vivian Art Gallery, Swansea; Newport Museum & Art Gallery; Museum of Modern Art Wales, Machynlleth; Contemporary Art Society for Wales; Nevill Hall Hospital, Abergavenny; Brecknock Art Trust; University of Glamorgan Art Collection; The Theatre Museum, Covent Garden; Private collections in Britain, mainland Europe and USA.
