ONE of Yorkshire’s most distinguished artists is to have a retrospective exhibition next month.

The Inspired by… gallery at Danby on the North York Moors has amassed almost 300 works from the 80-year-old artist’s long career, including work he is best known for – dramatic landscapes of the North York Moors National Park.

Inspired by the scenery and seasons of the Esk Valley, where he lives, his earliest work dates from 1956, and is a portrait of sunflowers outside his first studio – his father’s converted garage.

Covering 60 years, Peter Hicks: A Retrospective opens on Saturday, September 9.

It will include a sunset, painted as part of his degree show when he returned to college in the 1980s to study for an MA, the first in a series of seven paintings depicting a walk from dusk to dawn through Fryupdale.

The story of the hospital ship, Rohilla, which ran aground near Whitby in 1914 with the loss of 83 lives, inspired another set of paintings.

Mr Hicks moved to the Esk Valley from East Yorkshire as a child.

He said: “I revisit childhood thoughts and experiences and realise how important they are to my work. I’d be playing with my friends and would suddenly see, on a sunny day, how a mist would rise up and suck the colour from the surroundings.

“Those memories were logged and revisited much later in life, and that’s what I’ve continually done – visit and revisit things in this valley that have meaning and purpose.

"So when I look at a hillside, I’m looking at it as it is, but also seeing its history – how it’s evolved, how weather and time have changed it, and that’s very much a part of my practice as a painter.”

The exhibition runs until Monday, October 16. On Saturday, September 23, from 2-4pm, the artist will be interviewed at the gallery by Yorkshire photographer Joe Cornish. Tickets are £5; advance booking is recommended at northyorkmoors-peterhicks.eventbrite.co.uk.