Maggi Hambling CBE
Maggi Hambling's paintings of the sea show extraordinary vitality and brilliance of texture. They are amongst the best things she has done, and they are getting better and better. - David Scrase, The Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge.
Artist's statement
I am obsessed by the Suffolk sea. When I was seven I witnessed the Coronation fireworks exploding in the night sky above the sea at Aldeburgh. That sight sowed the seed for my sculpture, Scallop, many years later. Now I watch the waves approaching, gathering momentum, becoming solid for a second before dissolving. It’s close to an orgasm.
For me the greatest artists are Rembrandt, Van Gogh, Rothko, Rodin, Cy Twombly and Titian. Locally, the Constables in Christchurch Mansion (Constable beats Turner any day). Further afield my favourite galleries are the British Museum, the National Gallery, the Rodin Museum in Paris and of course the Museum of Modern Art in New York.
My ambition for my work is to keep at it in the hope of getting better and my challenges are philistines, interviewers and committees.
A great painting is alive, being created in front of you again and again. A photograph, however moving the subject, is a dead thing by comparison, it is history and very tame. It can never surpass its mechanical means of execution; there is no physical urgency. If my waves, whether in paint or bronze, break for me, I hope they will for others.
Articles
Publications featuring this artist
Studio details
Studio narrative:
I make an early start before most people have risen, 5 am in summer and 6 am in winter, by going to the sea to make graphite drawings in the sketchbook. I draw the sea in any condition, but it’s the moment of the waves breaking that I am really obsessed by.
I get back to the studio about an hour later and then work solidly, fuelled by coffee and cigarettes. My concentration is always on one piece at a time, but I often have half a dozen others around the walls, still cooking.
I hate interruptions and always enjoy the start of a new work and then descend into the pure hell of the middle section and finally, once the work is complete, I enjoy that for a moment. However, knowing when a painting or sculpture is finished is the trickiest bit of the whole business, and many are destroyed.
More about Maggi Hambling
Education
East Anglian School of Painting 1960 onwards
Ipswich School of Art 1962 - 64
Camberwell School of Art 1964 - 67 Dip AD
Slade School of Fine Art 1967 - 69 H Dip FA
Accreditations
Higher Diploma in Fine Art, Slade School of Fine Art, 1969
Honours
Officer of the British Empire 1995
Commander of the British Empire 2010
Local Galleries Familiar With Artist’s Work
Christchurch Mansion, Ipswich
Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge
Snape Maltings Gallery, Snape, Suffolk
Collections (Open To The Public)
British Museum, London
Tate Collection, London
National Portrait Gallery, London
Victoria and Albert Museum, London
Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge
Castle Museum, Norwich, Norfolk
Christchurch Mansion, Ipswich, Suffolk
Yale Center for British Art, USA
Australian National Gallery, Australia
Musée de la Main, Switzerland
Gulbenkian Foundation, Portugal
