The exhibition ‘Fountains Abbey and Studley Royal – A Landscape Painter’s Perspective’ is a collection by one of Northern England’s leading landscape artists – Peter M Hicks.
Commissioned by the
National Trust, Peter M Hicks has created a collection of works in response to the designed
landscapes of Fountains Abbey and Studley Royal Water Garden. The resulting paintings, studies and
sketchbooks will be displayed in an upcoming exhibition from June to August in Fountains Mill.
Commissioned by the
National Trust, Peter M Hicks has created a collection of works in response to the designed
landscapes of Fountains Abbey and Studley Royal Water Garden. The resulting paintings, studies and
sketchbooks will be displayed in an upcoming exhibition from June to August in Fountains Mill.
Category
🗞
NewsTranscript
00:00My name is Peter Michael Hicks. I live in Danby, North Yorkshire. I've lived in the valley of the Esk
00:09larger part of my life and I've painted almost the whole of my life although I've done other
00:17things as well. I was a teacher and I loved teaching. I still love teaching and we had
00:25this opportunity a couple of years ago. I rang up Joe Cornish who was having a photographic
00:32exhibition on at the time. I wanted to see his show and his wife Jenny said he'd love to see,
00:41to take you Peter. So he came over, picked up Stella and I and we came and we saw his wonderful
00:48work and we saw how wonderful in fact Fountains and Stirling Royal was. I was in the car with
00:59the director, Justin Scully. Eventually he said would you like to show here and I said
01:08can I think about it. It was quite an awesome prospect as far as I was concerned.
01:13It's a big place, very famous, visitors from all over the world and I chatted with my youngest
01:23daughter and she said of course you're gonna show and that was the end of it. So I came over
01:30with Stella and they gave me a mobility scooter to you know get around the place and I did a lot
01:38of work first of all here near the mill and near to Fountains itself and then later we spread out
01:48a bit further and went into the whole estate looking at different aspects of water and landscape
01:55together because essentially I'm a landscape painter. That's mostly what I paint in my own area.
02:02I've painted most parts of the country but I've got to honestly say I'm a Yorkshireman
02:10and it's mostly the Yorkshire landscapes that I'm most passionate about. In the other room
02:17there's a lot of small studies of Fountains Abbey itself. They're mostly looking and trying to decide
02:27what I would like to paint and I did about 12 of these and I did a lot of drawings related mostly
02:35to Fountains Abbey itself. But the paintings in this room are a mixture of things to do with
02:45Fountains and architecture and of course wherever possible I've taken the opportunity
02:53to concentrate on the landscape because landscape essentially is what I'm most familiar with.
02:59And how long is this show on for here? Two months, middle of June to middle of August.