Maggi Hambling's latest exhibition, Origins, is held at Gainsborough’s House in Suffolk, and is something of a homecoming. It was within the walls of Thomas Gainsborough’s House where Hambling first discovered oil painting — igniting an eternal love for the craft which allows her to effortlessly manifest her thoughts into existence.
"Origins" spans six decades of Hambling’s work, bearing witness to the artist’s deep connection with Suffolk and inviting a meditation on the universal relationships between self and environment, people and place.
Comprised of around 30 works, the paintings and drawings in "Origins" express a combination of exterior reality and interior life. Portrayals of people and places carry a sense of longer time: the unfolding of life, the workings of memory, the evolution of love, and the inescapable proximity of life to death – a theme that recurs throughout Hambling’s art. Suffolk links the artist’s early and present lives – she was born in Sudbury in 1945, she grew up in Hadleigh and has lived in rural Suffolk since the late 1990s.
June 17, 2023
