Artist in oil and pastel and teacher, born in London, full name Gerald Anthony William Hicks, married to the artist Anne Hicks. He studied at Slade School of Fine Art, 1944–5 and 1948–50, notable teachers including Randolph Schwabe, William Coldstream, Lucian Freud and William Townsend; and with Walter Bayes in Lancaster and London. Went on to teach at Cotham Grammar School, settling in Bristol, becoming a freelance artist in 1980. Hicks was a Judo 6th Dan which he said “influenced dynamic work”. He did stage designs and murals with his wife, working in the European realist tradition, and they were extensively committed to environmental work. He was chairman of the Bristol City Docks Group, was a member and chairman of the Bristol Civic Society and was vice-chairman of the South-West Council for Sport.
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Hicks was a member of RWA which holds his work (including a portrait of HM The Queen). Hicks exhibited at the RA, RBA, King Street Gallery, London, the Mall Gallery, Arnolfini and Bristol Guild, as well as sharing many joint shows with his wife, Anne. He had several solo shows in London and Bristol and shared some with his wife. Hicks was winner of the Bristol 600 Competition in 1973, won the Queen’s Silver Jubilee Award with a picture of Roger Bannister’s sub-four minute mile and in 1984 gained an Olympic painting prize. His many portrait commissions included Sir Charles Frank, the Nobel Prize winner Nevil Mott, Lord Methuen, the Member of Parliament Marcus Lipton and the actor John Woodvine. In 1997 completed a mural commission of I K Brunel for the SS Great Britain. His Judo through the Looking Glass, with illustrations, was published in 1994, in which year he was made a Member of the Order of the British Empire “for services to sport and the community in the south west”. Bristol, Brunel and Liverpool Universities and Bristol Merchant Venturers hold examples. In 2005 Jerry and Anne Hicks provided an inaugural exhibition for the Grant Bradley Gallery in Bristol.
Text source: 'Artists in Britain Since 1945' by David Buckman (Art Dictionaries Ltd, part of Sansom & Company)