MAGGI HAMBLING

MAGGI HAMBLING SIMPLY PAINTS WHAT IS TRUE, AND LETS HER CRITICS DO THE REST.

By Hattie Collins

Maggi Hambling is one of the most important artists of our lifetime. Her portraits and sculptures of lovers, friends, family, and famous figures are as tender and tumultuous as her highly responsive works considering nature, war, climate change, disease, and death. More productive than ever, Maggi has sketched and painted every day since picking up a paintbrush as a 14-year-old Suffolk schoolgirl.

The only time she paused this practice was for a brief period in 2022 while recovering from a heart attack. While both celebrated and decorated, Maggi—whose passion for menthols and super strength beer Special Brew is well-renowned—is no stranger to controversy; her sculptures of playwright and poet Oscar Wilde, foundational feminist Mary Wollstonecraft, and Scallop, a tribute to the composer Benjamin Britten have managed to upset. Yet over time, she’s won favor from even her harshest critics. She is also thoroughly enjoyable company with a rakish sense of humor and a raconteur’s approach to storytelling. Beyond Noise meets the brilliant 78 year old at her south London studio.

hattie collins: How are you, Maggi?

MAGGI HAMBLING: I’m fine. I take eight pills every morning. They’re to do with the heart attack I had in New York.

HC: How are you feeling now?

MH: Well, I’m better than I was at the time of the heart attack [laughs]. I remember waking up during the operation and they were doing things not with a machine, but with their hands. I thought to myself, Well, you’re going to live or you’re going to die. And then I went back into another world. I was very matter-of-fact about it. I didn’t get visions of my whole life in front of me or any of that rubbish.

HC: Did coming close diminish your fear of death?

MH: No, I’m still terrified of it [laughs]. Like Saint Augustine said, “Make me good, but not just yet.” When you’re as old as me, time creeps up. I’ve always worked very hard, but now I work harder than ever.

HC: You made a series of paintings after your heart attack. How do you reflect on Maelstrom now?

MH: Life dictates what I paint. [With] Gulf Women Prepare for War, for instance, I came across this black-and-white photograph in a newspaper and it was so shocking. There were these women that seemed to be in biblical costume, practicing with these enormous, heavy rockets in the middle of the desert. I had to paint it.

HC: Morley College, where you’ve taught for 55 years, recently exhibited the work of your students, including the TV presenter Anneka Rice.

MH: I remember some years ago she came here; they were doing some television thing and I went to the loo. I said, “Who is this woman?” A friend of mine said, “It’s Anneka Rice.” I said, “Oh, alright.” At the end, she asked about my classes, and so I said, “Be there at 10 a.m. with a bit of charcoal and a rubber.” And she was there the next morning.

HC: You have a rule with your students that they must crossdress at parties. Yes.

MH: I’ve decided at the wake after my funeral, people have got to crossdress and smoke and drink Special Brew.

HC: You’re no longer allowed to smoke, are you?

MH: No, the heart attack prevented me. I’ve had 34 cigarettes in two years. I always refused to be photographed without a cigarette. It was smoking that did it, you see. I was a professional smoker.

HC: In the show, you chose to exhibit one of the portraits of your then-lover and muse Henrietta Moraes. Why that painting?

MH: Well, I think it’s about one of the best things I’ve ever painted. I did it in 20 minutes. She’d been posing all day and it got to 4 p.m. I just got some turps and a rag and washed everything out that I’d done. It just sort of happened. The muse was with me. I do believe in the muse.

You do the same old shit all the time and occasionally something happens, and then the painting paints itself. That’s what I live for.

HC: Two works by Tory Lawrence, your long-term companion, also feature.

MH: Well, Tory went blind about three or four years ago because of the tumor in her brain pressing on the optic nerve. She’s now in an old people’s home so it’s very… depressing.

HC: How do you find living alone?

MH: It’s a bit lonely. But it’s okay. I get up very early in the morning and by half past nine I’m ready to go to sleep in front of the television. But I do have my moments in other departments, if you see what I mean.

HC: Talking of which, you are about do an exhibition in Hong Kong called The Night, featuring three new works: Sexy, Sexy Dream, and About To Kiss.

MH: Well, this extraordinary thing happened when I was 14. It was an art exam in which I did nothing but flick paint at people and generally be a nuisance because I was deeply in love with the biology mistress who was invigilating the exam. I saw the clock and it was 3:20 p.m. and I knew at 3:30 p.m. we had to hand in a painting. So, I did one.

And when the results came out two or three weeks later, I was top of art. I thought, This is quite surprising. I seem to be good at it without trying. I remember staying up until 2 a.m. trying to paint the night sky out of my bedroom window. I took the paintings to school the next day, laid them out, and people were laughing at them. The art teacher [Yvonne Drewry] came into the room and found me up the corner on the point of tears. She said, “[Criticism] has to be water off a duck’s back. Don’t take any notice of what anyone says about your work; you’re your own best critic.” It was pretty good for somebody to say that to me at such an early age.

HC: And do you think you’ve successfully captured the night now?

MH: Well, you’d have to ask other people, but I do destroy things that aren’t good enough. I think a painting can only move the viewer as much as the artist has been moved by the subject. I don’t issue instructions.

HC: How much does anger inform your work?

MH: I feel angry a lot of the time, yes. There’s this terrific feeling of energy—anger is energy. I think artists are lucky that they can write an opera or paint a picture about it.

HC: Do you feel that you have contributed in some way to changing the way we see things—

MH: [Bursts out laughing] Do you know my sculpture for Mary Wollstonecraft? My friend, the writer Paul Bailey, rang me the day it was on the news and said, “Never mind the Scallop, you have really put the pussy among the pigeons this time.” Then I was in Suffolk, leaving Waitrose, and one of the women that works there said, “Been making trouble again I see.” [Laughs] Which was quite nice.

HC: Do you like trouble because it means you’ve caused people to engage in some way?

MH: Well, honestly, I was quite upset with that reaction to Scallop because I thought it was one of the more beautiful things I’d managed to make. I couldn’t quite believe that people hated it so much. But those people now realize they’ve sold a lot of fish and chips and ice creams off the back of it, and they probably would be just as cross if somebody wanted to take it away.