LIVING on the North York Moors, the painter Peter Hicks is exposed to sunset glories and dramatic skies as 40 FRIDAY, JULY 18, 2014 WEEKEND dst.co.uk DARLINGTON & STOCKTON TIMES played out over rolling hills and dales.

Such visual magnificence seen from his studio at Danby or experienced out of doors is captured in studies painted on the spot then used for larger-scale semi-abstract pictures that convey the essence of the landscape.

Born in 1937, Hicks studied at Middlesbrough College of Art and his teaching career included 20 years as head of the creative arts department at Queen Elizabeth Sixth Form College in Darlington.

This exhibition brings together themes, which he calls his Reviews indulgences, to which he has kept returning over the years, but the overriding focus on how light affects the colours and contours of the land, with an underlying sense of potent drama.

The soft rolling shapes of panoramic vistas in the first gallery are followed by vibrant preparatory sketches in the next, painterly and visually appealing, so the theme of the third room comes as something of a shock.

Here is an imagined account of a real human tragedy when nature was at its most destructive.

The series shows mountainous seas engulfing a vessel, and a lifeboat perilously dangling from a dark cliff face. Hicks captures the sea at its most treacherous in sketches done for a joint exhibition at the Pannett Gallery in Whitby in August that will tell how the SS Rohilla hospital ship floundered on rocks not far from the town while travelling to Dunkirk 100 years ago, with considerable loss of life, but also heroism and bravery among those who tried to help.

Gordale, darkly permanent with its sleek waterfall, follows in contrast, before the final room showing nature greenly benign and almost playful in near abstract studies. The exhibition continues until July 26.

Pru Farrier