Ed Hicks’ latest mural at Nuart Aberdeen is tempting to admire simply as a dramatic landscape. Towering mountains rise through layers of mist, light breaks across distant hills and the composition recalls some of the great Romantic painters.
Look closer though and something unusual begins to happen. Scattered across the painting are fragments of thoughts, phrases and half-finished sentences. They appear almost like voices drifting through the landscape. They invite viewers to slow down and spend time with the work rather than simply walking past.
From Graffiti Backgrounds to Immersive Landscapes
Hicks’ artistic journey has taken an unexpected route. Known originally for graffiti-inspired character work, he eventually found himself becoming more interested in the backgrounds than the figures themselves.
“I got bored of doing characters,” he explains. “I thought I’d just do backgrounds. Then the backgrounds became the foregrounds.”
Those backgrounds gradually evolved into vast, theatrical environments inspired by the Romantic painters such as John Martin and J.M.W. Turner. Rather than painting recognisable locations, Hicks creates imagined landscapes that feel both familiar and timeless.
The result is work that encourages viewers to enter the scene themselves. There are rarely people within his paintings because, as Hicks sees it, the audience should become the protagonist.
“If you’re making public art,” he says, “it’s not about you. It’s about the audience.”
Watch the Full Interview with Ed Hicks
This article is based on an original interview recorded by Inspiring City with Ed Hicks during the Nuart Aberdeen Festival in April 2026. Watch the complete conversation below to hear Ed discuss the ideas, philosophy and creative process behind Anima Mundi and The Murals.
A Landscape That Thinks
This year’s Nuart Aberdeen theme, Poetry in the Streets, encouraged artists to explore language alongside image. For Hicks, it became an opportunity to push his work in a new direction.
His mural, Anima Mundi, overlays the landscape with countless snippets of text. Rather than reading like a poem or a statement, the words feel fragmented. He describes it like tuning an old radio and catching brief snippets of conversation before they disappear again.
The inspiration comes from the philosophical idea of Anima Mundi. This is the belief that the world itself possesses a living soul.
Hicks also draws on the contemporary concept of panpsychism, which suggests that consciousness may exist, in some form, throughout the natural world. Instead of treating rocks, trees and clouds as passive scenery, he imagines them quietly thinking. The scattered phrases then become those thoughts.
Rather than presenting a single message, Hicks leaves room for uncertainty. The landscape refuses to explain itself completely. Viewers are meant to bring their own interpretations to the experience.
Darkness Before Light
Although Hicks’ murals can often appear dark at first glance, he insists they are fundamentally about light.
His paintings are structured from dark tones towards lighter ones. Forms gradually emerge as though illuminated for the first time. That same movement also shapes the emotional journey through the work.
Chaos dominates the foreground. The middle distance suggests communication. The horizon offers the possibility of resolution.
Whether that distant light represents hope, a new beginning or simply another unanswered question is left deliberately open.
“There should be a question or two left,” Hicks explains. “The work shouldn’t contain its own interpretation.”
Turning the Mirror on Mural Culture
Alongside Anima Mundi, Hicks created a second mural nearby called ‘The Murals‘. Rather than painting a single image, he assembled a grid of twelve panels describing familiar types of murals seen at festivals around the world. Together, Ed Hicks’ two works at Nuart Aberdeen reveal very different approaches to public art.
Portraits. Footballers. Skulls.
Instead of depicting these directly, Hicks presents them almost as recipes or prompts. He is gently poking fun at the visual clichés that have become increasingly common within contemporary muralism.
He describes it as a form of “genre bingo”. A checklist of recurring themes that audiences instantly recognise and often celebrate.
Yet even here, the critique is playful rather than cynical. As the work developed, Hicks found himself painting atmospheric backgrounds behind the text, creating a piece that became both a commentary on mural conventions and an unmistakably Ed Hicks landscape.
Making Public Art Matter
Throughout the conversation, Hicks repeatedly returns to one central idea. That public art should offer more than immediate recognition.
Rather than creating murals that reveal everything in a single glance, he wants viewers to spend time with the work. Discovering new details and constructing their own meanings.
For Hicks, a mural should continue to unfold long after that first impression. It should reward curiosity, invite interpretation and leave enough ambiguity. Enough for each viewer to bring something of themselves to the experience.
Standing beneath Anima Mundi in Aberdeen, surrounded by whispered fragments of language scattered across an imagined landscape, it becomes clear that Hicks is asking something increasingly rare of public art.
Not simply to be seen. But to be explored.
About this Interview
This feature is based on an original interview recorded by Inspiring City with Ed Hicks during the Nuart Aberdeen Festival in April 2026. The article combines observations of the artist’s murals with insights taken directly from that conversation.
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A mural you can find interesting from afar and close up.