I caught a word with Beverley Hicks at the opening of the ‘Connections and Reflections’ exhibition at the Dales Countryside Museum.
Were her abstract paintings about people or purely about her engagement with landscape?
She said: “I think it really is about engagement with landscape. But inevitably it’s about me, and it’s a reflection of me. It’s a way that I can communicate with people probably better than I can in any other way.”
Circles have often featured in her work.
Beverley Hicks said: “It’s not a bad thing to look back and take the best things of what you’ve done in life, and use those. The circles came about when I won a scholarship to go to Australia and I looked at the dot paintings. That was where they came from. They [the circles] have always been somewhere in the paintings but I wanted to bring them back again [for this exhibition].
“For me the grids are a comforting way of responding to the landscape.”
It was only when I was back in the office that I saw the photographs she had taken of landscape features near her home in Airton, photos which had inspired her paintings.
These photographs are in themselves captivating, so with Beverley’s permission, here are two of them. First, a photo which shows wire, footprints, colours and shapes:
Second, the ghosts of sheep:
The exhibition, ‘Reflections and Connections’, can be seen at the Dales Countryside Museum until 31 December.
