Clive Hicks-Jenkins was born in Newport, south Wales, in 1951. The early part of his career was as a choreographer and stage director. In the 1990s he turned away from theatre to concentrate on painting. He has been praised by critics in The Independent, Modern Painters and Art Review. Simon Callow has called him 'one of the most individual and complete artists of our time' and Nicholas Usherwood in Galleries has described his work as 'reflective, expressive painting of the highest order.'
He shows regularly with the Martin Tinney Gallery in Cardiff and has had solo exhibitions at Christ Church Picture Gallery in Oxford, the Museum of Modern Art Machynlleth, Newport Museum & Art Gallery, Anthony Hepworth Fine Art, Brecknock Museum, the National Library of Wales and Aberyswyth Arts Centre. His paintings, prints and private press books are in numerous public collections, including the National Museum of Wales, the Glynn Vivian Art Gallery, MoMA Machynlleth, the Contemporary Art Society for Wales, Llandaff Cathedral, Pallant House Gallery and the Methodist Church Collection of Modern Art, as well as private collections and libraries around the world. He is a Royal Cambrian Academician and an Honorary Fellow of Aberystwyth University School of Art. In 2017 he was awarded an Honorary Doctorate of Arts by Southampton Solent University.
In 2016 Random Spectacular published Hick's-Jenkins dark reworking of Hansel & Gretel into a picture book, and the following year Benjamin Pollock's Toyshop in Covent Garden commissioned a Hansel & Gretel toy theatre kit based on it. In response to the two publications, Goldfield Productions engaged the artist, to direct and design a new version of the fairytale, with music by Matthew Kaner and a libretto by the poet Simon Armitage. Performed by a chamber consort, a narrator/singer and two puppeteers, it premiered at the Cheltenham Music Festival in July 2018 followed by a five month tour of music festivals. The London premiere at Barbican was recorded by BBC Radio 3 for broadcast in December 2018. Hansel & Gretel was the second collaboration between the artist and poet, coming on the heels of Faber & Faber publishing Armitage's revision of his translation of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, illustrated throughout with the fourteen screenprints Hicks-jenkings made in collaboration with Penfold Press. Simon Armitage's Hansel & Gretel: a nightmare in eight scenes, was published in the Spring of 2019 by Design for Today, with illustrations by Hicks-Jenkins.
In 2014 Composer Mark Bowden and poet Damian Walford Davies wrote The Mare's Tale, a work for actor/singer and chamber consort inspired by the artist's series of drawings of the same title, and for the past five years, his animated film of Stravinsky's The Soldier's Tale has been screened by orchestras around the world as an accompaniment to their performances. In 2019 the Berkeley Ensemble will be making a national tour of performances of The Mare's Tale.
The monograph Clive Hicks-Jenkins was published by Lund Humphries in 2011.