Christ Writes in the Dust – The Woman Taken in Adultery, 2011
Clive Hicks-Jenkins (b.1951)
Acrylic on panel, 86 x 62cm. Methodist Modern Art Collection, MCMAC: 022
Image Copyright © Trustees for Methodist Church Purposes. The Methodist Church Registered Charity no. 1132208
Biblical commentary
John 8: 2-11
The shapes of Christ and the woman are mirror images, almost interlocking. To read Christ’s expression, viewers have to turn their heads almost upside down. The artist wanted the woman to be ‘streetwise, older, flaunting So she would be more difficult to forgive.’ The accusers in the foreground are even in tone, so as not to detract from the central characters. The stones are hidden behind their backs. People viewing the picture are ranged with them. The background is based on sketches of Montclar in Catalonia, which the artist visited in the spring of 2010. It is a charming and picturesque village but with darkness beneath, relating to events 70 years ago in the Spanish Civil War. Truth telling, reconciliation and forgiveness have not occurred there.
Commentary based on A Guide to the Methodist Art Collection.
Artist biography
Born: Newport, South Wales, 1951
Early life
Clive Hicks-Jenkins was interested in art from an early age. After his family moved to London when he was 12, he spent much time visiting art galleries.
Education
Hicks-Jenkins did not train as an artist but studied at the Italia Conti Stage School (1963-66) and then at Ballet Rambert.
Life and career
Hicks-Jenkins began his career as a dancer, but moved on to success as a choreographer, director and stage designer. He created productions for leading dance companies across the world, and for television and film. He began to turn to painting in the 1990s developing a distinctive style and establishing himself as one of Wales’ leading contemporary figurative painters. He is a Royal Cambrian Academician and an Honorary Fellow of Aberystwyth University.
His early works were landscapes which he soon combined with a still-life element such as the form of a jug, bowl or pottery figurine. His interest in narrative painting began in 2003-2004 when he produced a series of works in response to fragments of a Tuscan altarpiece at Christ Church, Oxford, showing the lives of the desert fathers. He has addressed subjects as diverse as the Annunciation, Elijah and the raven, and St George and the dragon. He has described himself as “a narrative artist of diverse practices”.
Exhibitions and collections
Hicks-Jenkins has had solo exhibitions in the New Theatre, Cardiff (1984); Theatre Clwyd, Mold (1986); and Newport Museum and Art Gallery, Swansea (2001). Group exhibitions included those in the Attic Gallery, Swansea (1997); 56 Group Wales, The Art Shop and Art Gallery, Abergavenny (2008); and A Mythic Understanding: inspired by David Jones, Camberwell College of Arts (2018). He is renowned for his book illustrations. He recently illustrated the poet Laureate Simon Armitage’s translations of the medieval poems, Gawain and the Green Knight (2018) and the Owl and the Nightingale (2021).
His commissions have included frieze murals for the natural history department at Newport Museum and Theatre Clywd.
His work is held in the Theatre Museum, Covent Garden; the National Museum of Wales; Glynn Vivian Art Gallery, Swansea; and Pallant House Art Gallery, Swansea. His The Virgin of the Goldfinches, purchased by the Contemporary Art Society for Wales hangs permanently in the Saint Dyfrig Chapel of Llandaff Cathedral, Cardiff.
Sources and further reading
Artist’s website: http://www.hicks-jenkins.com/ (viewed 18 September 2024)
David Buckman Artists in Britain Since 1945: Volume 1 A to L. Vol. 1 of 2 volumes, (Bristol, Art Dictionaries Ltd, 2006), p. 734. The text is also available on the Art UK website: https://artuk.org/discover/artists/hicks-jenkins-clive-b-1951/view_as/grid/search/2024--artists:hicks-jenkins-clive-b1951/page/1 (viewed 18 September 2024)
Simon Callow et al, Clive Hicks-Jenkins, (London, Lund Humphries, 2011)
Seeing the Spiritual: A Guide to the Methodist Modern Art Collection, (Oxford, Methodist Modern Art Collection, 2018), p. 58-59