THE National Trust is extending this summer’s run of Peter Hicks’s exhibition, Fountains Abbey & Studley Royal – A Landscape Painter’s Perspective, to September 15.
On show is a collection of works painted in response to the John and William Aislabie-designed landscapes of Fountains Abbey and the Studley Royal Water Garden during Hicks’s residency in 2023.
Commissioned by the National Trust, the Yorkshire landscape artist’s paintings, studies and sketchbooks are on display in Fountains Mill.
Born in Osgodby, near Selby, Hicks has lived and worked for most of his life on the North York Moors close to the Yorkshire coast. Now in his eighties, he continues to be inspired by the drama and immense scale of the British landscape.
“The chance to work at Fountains Abbey and Studley Royal late in life surprised me,” says Peter. “Then it became a chance to explore a vision of my own in a place rich with promise to a painter crossing from the 20th to the 21st century, heavy with freedoms and procedures and the practical choices newly open to me.
“Fountains Abbey and Studley Royal may not have needed me to speak about its rich heritage and landscape vistas, but I have come to see that it has given me a chance to explore landscape and waterways in my own choice of texture, colour and use of material and pictorial language.
“This is all at a time when I might be expected to be slowing down concerning my painter’s practice. It has been said of me, however, that in fact this opportunity has come when I am at the height of my ongoing fulfilment. What a wonderful hope and promise.”
Hicks works in abstract landscapes with acrylic washes on canvas and board, making his own benches and brush handles and using humble and accessible materials, such as old margarine pots for mixing his paints, as well as upcycling old jewellery boxes into paint boxes.
To illustrate this, the exhibition features selected studio objects, such as paint pots and brushes, testimonials from Hicks about his creative process, and his own workbench.
General manager Justin Scully says: “I first met Peter in July 2022, when he had been invited to Fountains Abbey by renowned landscape photographer Joe Cornish. Peter was reminiscing that he had sketched here many years ago and I politely said that it was time for him to visit us again. From such a brief conversation came great things.
“As it has always done, this special place captures an artist’s imagination. The commission has created much more work than we ever intended but, to my mind, it has also captured Peter’s personality itself and his very particular aesthetic.
“Peter’s studio in the North York Moors is inspirational; it embodies his way of working, his approach to his art, and we have tried to give some hint of this in the exhibition. Peter has completely understood and captured our spirit of place as both a garden and a romantic ruin, but also the way the iconic image of the abbey itself is part of our Yorkshire identity.”
Justin concludes: “As part of a programme of contemporary art commissions stretching back to 2015, it shows the role Fountains can play in supporting artists but also how art can add to a deeper love and understanding of this place for our visitors.”
The exhibition was scheduled to close on August 11 but will now run for an extra month. Artwork is on display in the Tabernacle at Studley Lake in the water garden too.
Fountains Abbey and Studley Royal, near Ripon, is open all year round. Summer opening hours: 10am to 4.30pm; car parks close at 6.30pm. Normal admission applies for the exhibition; entry is free for National Trust members and under-fives. Tickets: nationaltrust.org.uk/visit/yorkshire/fountains-abbey-and-studley-royal-water-garden.