Clive Hicks-Jenkins: Iliad / Odyssey: Artworks for the Folio Society Homer

In 2023 Clive Hicks-Jenkins was invited to produce illustrations for the Folio Society’s new double-edition of Homer’s The Iliad and The Odyssey. From his then Aberystwyth home, and now new home and studio in Monmouthshire, Clive has over the course of these past years completed this undertaking with the Folio Society’s release of a breathtakingly beautiful unfolding box containing two quarter-bound books of these classic texts as translated by Emily Wilson. With this work he continues a long-standing partnership with the Folio Society, gaining a certain synonymity and prominence on the bookshelves of many.

With the limited double edition now sold out, and The Folio Society about to launch the standard single editions (The Iliad in March, and The Odyssey in August), Celf Gallery is delighted to be hosting an exhibition of the original artwork of these foundational epics.

Using his approach of painting in gouache and overlaying with pencil, Clive rested on the use of this limited opaline palette of golds and blues imposed on a jet black surface. The effect is stunning and the result of an arduous creative process that starts with a studied reading of the texts and a long cast-list of potential characters and narrative scenes. Flat maquettes with moving parts were then produced, a tool, not so far removed from Clive’s puppetry and choreography background, in order to arrange compositions within the negative space, photographing them and drawing as he goes.

“I like to put myself in the spaces between the sentences, and to inhabit the places the writer has left unexplored. I play every role, in my head. I make vast numbers of sketches, mostly rough and ready, freely improvising on themes. My project books are comprehensive”

The marriage of Clive’s illustrative style to the mythic Hellenic world of Homer is a curiously fitting match. Indeed there’s something of Clive’s work which feels antediluvian, as having roots deep down in the mantel of the visual language of drama, myth, and the fantastical, befitting for the gods and monsters of these works whose place is at the very centre of western art and literature.

There will be approximately 30 works in the exhibition including original double page illustrations, studies and maquettes.

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