Nicola Hicks was born in London in 1960 into a family of well-established artists. She studied at Chelsea School of Art (1978-82 ) and at the Royal College of Art (1982-85).
She took part in Christie's Inaugural Graduate Exhibition in 1982, but was able to project her precocious talent with astounding effect when Elisabeth Frink chose her, aged twenty-four, for the annual Artist for the Day exhibition at the Angela Flowers Gallery in 1984.
At a time when London was enjoying fame as the capital of punk culture and the art world was focused on abstract and conceptual art, with sculptures often conceived as 'installations', Hicks's interest in animal forms made her feel out of step with her contemporaries. However, the image of a life-sized dying bull made of straw and hessian was the beginning of a long-standing relationship with the Angela Flowers Gallery (now Flowers East Gallery), where she held her first solo exhibition in 1985. Since then she has exhibited in Paris, India, Denmark, Sweden and Norway, and her works have been included in public collections in Japan.
Her early animal sculptures were often as imaginary as they were real, portrayed as sentient beings. With the birth of her son, William, Hicks turned also to human form. The extent to which life and art are inextricably linked for her was given new meaning when she insisted that he was born in her studio. Within days she began to model the form of her baby, and some of her most poignant works are a reflection of the emotional experience of becoming a mother for the first time.
Hicks's mature works examine the relationship of human beings and animals, who have, she maintains, precious qualities in common, 'the qualities we are deeply in touch with subconsciously and may be totally out of touch within our conscious state.'