Aidan Hicks was born in Penzance in 1966, went on to study architecture and design but returned to his family farm in 1991. Drawing and painting remained an incessant hobby but a few years ago he began to experiment with sculpture.

Because he was brought up, and has always lived, in Cornwall he can be very sceptical about mystical or Celtic references; sometimes he produces something that might have a bit of both, but believes that’s for others to observe rather than for him to claim. This is why he usually gives his pieces a straightforward, factual name and number rather than something more high-flown.

He likes to experiment with all sorts of stone, even concrete, but has found that Cornish serpentine and some of the metamorphosed rocks liberally scattered about the south west granites can produce beautiful results. At the moment he’s using a very local granite. It is more than merely local,  coming from his family’s land where he now farms. He finds it very satisfying to take rock from earth that has  both a personal and long family association and then re-form it into  sculpture.

This taking of the stone from the earth also fits with many of his inspirations for the work. He has always been deeply interested in archaeology and ancient sculpture, and the relationship people have had with stone in their environment. It is, to coin a phrase, elemental. What our ancestors did with it is now to us enigmatic, whether we’re looking at a menhir on a hill side or even the line of a field hedge. There was a reason for both to be as they are, but we can’t know what it was. Even in mediaeval art, while we might think we have more understanding of what was meant, we cannot know what it meant exactly, originally. Time and weather adds (or detracts) further meaning from specific objects which somehow adds to their meaning. All of which Aidan thinks about when shaping his lumps of granite; when he’s finished, he hopes they might look as though they came out of the ground just as they are.

Aidan is a Member of the Penwith Society of Artists and exhibits at the Penwith Gallery in St. Ives. If you are interested in knowing more please get in touch using the contact form below.