Maggi Hambling, British artist, at 73: ‘I wake up every day at 5am full of optimism and the first thing I do is make a drawing’
- Artist known for craggy self-portraits and public sculptures shows another side to her art – drawings of her father as he lay dying in 1996, and after his death
- ‘I miss him very much,’ she tells Guangdong Museum of Art crowd. She says artists are lucky they can paint the dead – ‘like grieving but in a positive way’
Last month Maggi Hambling and curator Philip Dodd found themselves practically shoved against the wall as they led enthusiastic visitors on a guided tour of her major retrospective at the Guangdong Museum of Art.
The straight-talking, chain-smoking, queer British artist didn’t expect to be mobbed like a celebrity by the many young Chinese families who regularly visit the provincial government museum in Guangzhou on Sundays. She was told to expect a small group of journalists at the opening, but took the much larger crowd in her stride with help from a Mandarin-speaking translator.
“When I was about the size of this lovely young person here (pointing to a girl of about seven, sitting cross-legged on the floor), my mother said I would walk into the sea and talk to it. Talk, talk, talk, talk, talk,” she said the last bit rapidly, high-pitched and accompanied with hand gestures.
Young members of the audience squealed in laughter.
