MAGGI HAMBLING: WAVES AND WATERFALLS

About

Maggi Hambling (born 1945) is a distinguished painter, sculptor, printmaker and one of very few contemporary draughtsmen of real distinction. Her work can be seen in the British Museum, National Gallery, National Portrait Gallery, Tate and many other public collections in the U.K. and abroad. Amidst the loud clamour for attention that is the currency of much fashionably `sensational' art, Hambling's paintings and drawings reach challenging new heights of meaning.

In 2003 Scallop, the artist's controversial sculpture to celebrate Benjamin Britten was unveiled on Aldeburgh beach, Suffolk. In the pause between making the maquette and beginning work on the actual piece, Hambling began her now famous series of North Sea Paintings. The restless movement of the sea continues to obsess the artist and has never been so powerfully or physically expressed as in these recent work.

The action and energy of the paint directly challenge the viewer.

In contrast to the predominantly horizontal rhythm of the sea paintings there will be the first in a new series of monumental waterfalls which will be seen for the first time in London. Four of these will tower the full height of the gallery walls, literally cascading from ceiling to floor.

Human and animal activity can be discovered within all these multi-layered works. Life, and its inescapable bed-fellow death, are finely balanced in these confrontational images.

Marlborough Graphics will be showing an exciting new series of monoprints which capture waves and waterfalls on a smaller scale. These will have their first showing in the exhibition. Ink studies of sea and sky made on the Suffolk coast will also be on show. Fully illustrated catalogues of both the paintings and the works on paper will be published.