MAGGI HAMBLING: WALLS OF WATER at the National Gallery & Marlborough Fine Art
Maggi Hambling
Wall of water, Amy Winehouse
2011
Oil on canvas
36 x 48 in
© Maggi Hambling, photograph by Douglas Atfield
The gigantic waves depicted in this new body of work are inspired by the waves the artist has seen crashing against the sea wall at Southwold in her native Suffolk. In her large paintings at the National Gallery the exuberant colours bring the immediacy of the life and death cycle of the waves to the viewer forcefully as do the starker black and white monotypes to be seen at Marlborough Fine Art. Closer inspection of the works reveals the shadowy ghosts of people and animals as well and indeed there is one smaller painting that was created in response to Amy Winehouse’s death in 2011.
Wall of Water 3, 2011, 75.3 x 106.5 cm
Courtesy of Marlborough Fine Art
Hambling says of them “The one crucial thing that only painting can do is to make you feel as if you’re there while it’s being created – as if it’s happening in front you.”
Tim Forrest's E & A 