thu 28/03/2024

theartsdesk Q&A: Artist Maggi Hambling | reviews, news & interviews

theartsdesk Q&A: Artist Maggi Hambling

theartsdesk Q&A: Artist Maggi Hambling

The flamboyant artist talks to theartsdesk about sex, death and the sea.

Maggi Hambling: 'You’ve got to make your work your best friend'© Jillian Edelstein

Next week sees the opening of an exhibition at Marlborough Fine Art of new work by Maggi Hambling, one of the most innovative and prolific - not to mention flamboyant - artists working in Britain today, which neatly coincides with a show of sea paintings at the Fitzwilliam in Cambridge. You can see a selection in theartsdesk's gallery. Born in 1945, she has a reputation for being fierce and she’s certainly imposing – had she opted for a career in the performing arts she’d have given Edith Evan’s Lady Bracknell a run for her money – but she’s also extremely good company. And she’s a grafter, rising before dawn and putting the hours in before collapsing with a whisky in front of Coronation Street. “Well, one has to keep in touch with reality somehow,” she told me when I recently visited her at her studio in Suffolk.

Next week sees the opening of an exhibition at Marlborough Fine Art of new work by Maggi Hambling, one of the most innovative and prolific - not to mention flamboyant - artists working in Britain today, which neatly coincides with a show of sea paintings at the Fitzwilliam in Cambridge. You can see a selection in theartsdesk's gallery. Born in 1945, she has a reputation for being fierce and she’s certainly imposing – had she opted for a career in the performing arts she’d have given Edith Evan’s Lady Bracknell a run for her money – but she’s also extremely good company. And she’s a grafter, rising before dawn and putting the hours in before collapsing with a whisky in front of Coronation Street. “Well, one has to keep in touch with reality somehow,” she told me when I recently visited her at her studio in Suffolk.

I think great art inhabits the place that is both life and death and that’s rather the point of it

Share this article

Add comment

newsletter

Get a weekly digest of our critical highlights in your inbox each Thursday!

Simply enter your email address in the box below

View previous newsletters