Event date: 20 February 2023
Review by Danusia Wurm
Polar Bear, Maggi Hambling 2019
“Drawing is the basis of everything I’ve ever done”
"It’s all about feeling. The eye, the heart, and the hand", declared internationally acclaimed artist Maggi Hambling during a wide-ranging conversation with the Norwich Castle Museum’s Senior Curator, Francesca Vanke, at a packed Norwich School Blake Studio.
The Brigadier, a portrait of her lifelong friend Penny Allen, nee Colman, and The Laugh, two examples of her exceptional series of portraits, perfectly exemplify Hambling’s maxim "every portrait is like a love affair".
No stranger to controversy, Hambling also touched on the arguments that have surrounded her sculptures, A Sculpture for Mary Wollstonecraft, A conversation with Oscar Wilde and Scallop. Featuring, amongst other works, Hambling’s haunting Heron in the Shallows, Polar Bear and part of The Edge series, Hambling shared her life-long love of nature and passion for the wider environment. "My work is directed by life – the climate crisis, melting ice caps, pollution in the rivers, the sea devouring our coast."
She has no fear of death. The Happy Dead series shows a flip side to death with souls looking to the stars. Hambling’s more recent abstract seascapes owed more to Constable than Turner she explained.
Happily, Hambling continues to teach art "to hand on, to give back".
She left an enthralled audience, with her mantra "to draw every day. Drawing is the basis of everything I’ve ever done".
Maggi Hambling with The Laugh. Image PA
Review by ncas trustee Danusia Wurm