Peter Michael Hicks B.1937. English. Scaling Dam, North Yorkshire. Abstract Northern English Landscape. Original Oil Painting.

Peter Michael Hicks.
English ( b.1937 ).
Scaling Dam, North Yorkshire.
Oil On Canvas.
Signed Lower Right.
Image size 17.1 inches x 44.9 inches ( 43.5cm x 114cm ).

Available for sale from Big Sky Fine Art in the English county of Dorset, this original oil painting is by the Yorkshire artist Peter Hicks.
The painting is presented and supplied as a box canvas without a frame.
The painted surface has benefitted from a light clean and the application of a light conserving varnish layer which was performed on our instruction, supervision and approval.
This vintage painting is in very good condition, commensurate with its age. It wants for nothing and is supplied ready to hang and display.
The painting is signed lower right.

Peter Hicks is arguably the foremost contemporary landscape painter of North Yorkshire. His work has been exhibited extensively and featured in numerous television broadcasts.

He was born in 1937 in Osgodby in East Yorkshire but has lived almost his entire life in Eskdale, North Yorkshire. During his youth he was able to explore the tranquility of the woods and dales to his heart’s content and his immense love of the landscape of Yorkshire was born. He went to school in Whitby, where he excelled as sport, but also began painting in his spare time. His father encouraged his obvious talent and so he was sent to Scarborough School of Art. Unhappy with the teaching there, he moved to Middlesbrough College of Art in 1956, where he struck up an immediate rapport with Joe Cole and his wife Sheila. Joe and Sheila Cole’s influence on Hicks was crucial. He often travelled with Cole on painting trips, and he had art history lessons with Sheila Cole. In 1963 Hicks married Joe Cole’s younger sister Eileen, who was also an art teacher.

Whilst he was at Art School Hicks was a keen athlete and excelled at middle distance running. He was coached to a very high standard by the legendary Eric Beard, and was eventually among the final few from which the British Team was picked for the Rome Olympics. Although Hicks was not chosen, he learnt lessons that applied to both running and painting which were to remain with him.

Hicks did his running training on the Yorkshire moors and learned their contours through his feet as well as through his eyes. His physical, intimate understanding of the landscape owes much to this time.

After he left Middlesbrough College of Art Hicks taught in various schools and colleges before becoming Head of the Creative Arts department at Queen Elizabeth College in Darlington. He held this post for twenty years, but always continued to paint. He also lectured on art for Durham and Hull Universities and compiled a publication on the Life and Works of the artist Lillian Colbourn. For many years he experimented in his own work with pure abstraction. It was not until he completed a late MA in Fine Art at the (now) University of Northumbria that he fully developed his distinctive style as a figurative landscapist. For the last twenty years he has been painting his own chosen subjects entirely in his own idiom.

Peter works with long handled brushes flat on the floor using glazes of acrylic, adding sand and other materials, avoiding too obvious brush marks but accepting the way in which paint falls and dries.

Hicks says “In my landscapes there are no people, animals, farms, fences, walls, gates or clearly identifiable things. Yet this is not a particularly new way of working; Paul Serusier and Cezanne successfully produced landscape paintings made from simple blocks of colour with descriptive information to create the image of landscape, late in the 19th century.

The reason I work this way is because it gives me the opportunity to instill into the paintings ideas and feelings that concern me on many aspects of life. I work in the belief, like the abstract expressionists, that whatever goes into the painting, must inevitably come out and in the process of time, be felt and hopefully understood.”

Peter Hicks is synonymous with paintings of the Yorkshire Moors. His sweeping landscapes of the moors in all weathers describe and explore the fall of light and cloud-shadow over immense rolling distance.

“I choose to concern myself as a painter with landscape as a means through which to communicate ideas, feelings and aspirations – out of a need and towards some kind if fulfillment. My perception is caught between figuration and abstraction. I pare away specific things and work with the basic forces of my subject – its moods, light, rhythmic ‘lie-of the-land’ and atmosphere”.

Works of Peter Hicks have been exhibited widely throughout the UK, and most recently at Messums, Cork Street, London. Today he lives and works in Danby, North Yorkshire. His daughters, Beverly Hicks and Lesley Hicks are both accomplished artists in their own right and father and daughters recently put on a joint exhibition of their work.

© Big Sky Fine Art

This particular painting is a fine example of Peter Hicks’ work – Scaling Dam, which is on the edge of the North York Moors, towards Teesside.

A magnificent original painting, full of atmosphere and movement. This is an abstract depiction of Scaling Dam, which is on the edge of the North York Moors, towards Teesside, shown dark against the rolling green of the land. The sky is lit up with bright whites and yellows against the blue. It is a stunning piece which adds drama and light to any room.

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Condition report:

Very Good.
The painted surface has benefitted from a light clean and the application of a light conserving varnish layer which was performed on our instruction, supervision and approval.
This vintage painting is in very good condition, commensurate with its age. It wants for nothing and is supplied ready to hang and display.
The painting is signed lower right.

Additional dimensions information:

Box Canvas Size 17.1 inches x 44.9 inches ( 43.5cm x 114cm ). Depth 1.8 inches (4.5cm).