Pearl Lam: Welcome to the Pearl Lam Podcast. I’m sitting here today at Maggie Hambling’s studio. I would love to introduce the artist, Maggie Hambling, and her very good friend and art critic, Louisa Buck. Maggie, please talk a little bit about yourself.

Maggi Hambling: Well, I like to laugh.

Pearl Lam: I know.

Maggi Hambling: You know. Cause I live in a permanent state of doubt about my work and doom. And it’s very odd. You could have a whiskey at 6:00pm thinking you’ve had a good day in the studio and you look at it the next morning and it’s shit. And then you could have a whiskey at 6:00pm thinking you’ve done nothing but shit all day. And you look the next morning and it’s not bad. I mean, there are just no rules.

Pearl Lam: Because every time you look at a work, you feel differently. For every artist after they finish the work, they need to take some time to go back to the sea, the work, to give an objective feel. Is that right?

Maggi Hambling: Absolutely right. And the mirror is very useful, you see, because when, when I’m actually at it, the whole thing is so subjective. But then you look at the reflection in the mirror of what you’re, what you’re doing, and that is objective. And you can tell whether you’ve got an ear coming out of an eye or something like that.

Pearl Lam: So when you look at your work, do you look at the mirror reflection or do you look at the work itself?

Maggi Hambling: I look at the work itself and the mirror reflection, both.

Pearl Lam: Oh, let’s talk about you, Louisa. You are an art critic. And then how do you start? And then, you know, you’re involving, you’re talking about art and art with social issues like conceptual art.

Louisa Buck: I’m an art journalist. I’m the contemporary art correspondent for the art newspaper. And I also work for all sorts of different people as well. The BBC. I used to present a radio show for the BBC and still do a lot I mean, I. I very quickly realized I wasn’t going to be able to be an artist myself. I had nothing remotely interesting.

Pearl Lam: But you study art?

Louisa Buck: I studied at university. I went to Cambridge and then the Courtauld institute, and I knew that I loved art and I loved artists, but I wasn’t going to make anything of interest.

Pearl Lam: But you didn’t want to be an art historian?

Louisa Buck: I mean, I did. I have a kind of qualification as an art historian. But what I really loved was meeting artists, talking about their work, seeing their work, writing about it. Being an academic, I have a very low concentration and patients thresholds. That wasn’t really ever going to be for me. And so I’m very lucky. I’ve spent the last few decades meeting, interviewing, talking to artists. But yes, the social, economic, political issues. Art’s about the world. Sometimes it’s relevant to talk about these things. Sometimes it’s not. It depends on the art. It depends on the artist. But art is part of the world we live in. Artists are part of the world we live in. Maggie has made extraordinary works that refer to conflicts and war and all kinds of climate issues. They’re not just about that. Of course they’re not, but they feed in because we’re all human beings in the world that we’re in. So I feel like I want that to be reflected in what I cover and I write about as well.

Pearl Lam: So when you approach art, when you approach how you paint in a portraiture, do you have the same approach with your landscape?

Maggi Hambling: I don’t do landscapes.

Pearl Lam: I mean, not. I mean, like the wall. The wall of water, which is water, right?

Maggi Hambling: Yes.

Pearl Lam: So seascape, what do you, what would you say?

Maggi Hambling: It’s all the same. It’s all the same. I had a show some years ago called portraits of people and the sea, and somebody said to me that there’s one recorded statement that Rembrandt made, which is, I have painted nothing but portraits. So that means the tiniest chicken coop in the tiniest etching was a particular chicken coop. I mean, generalization is the worst enemy of art. And so every mark has to be precise and discovered every time. That’s what is so difficult.

Pearl Lam: Because when I saw your work, it makes me think about the chinese ink brush painting. I mean, especially, you know, when I have your work at the West bund, at the art fair, and they were walking. A lot of people have seen your work before because it was, you had the show in Carver and you have to show in the Guangdong museum. So they came and then they said, oh, it’s Maggie Hambling. And then he said, but it looks like a chinese ink brush painting. I, I mean, when you were doing the work, did you actually have being inspired or have you ever looked at a chinese inkbrush painting or you just do your gestures?

Maggi Hambling: No, no. I mean, I have studied.

Pearl Lam: You studied?

Maggi Hambling: I’ve studied it in the British Museum, looked at it, enjoyed it. And that whole eastern thing of it being as important where you don’t make a mark as where you do make a mark. And so as I’ve got older, I try to say more with less, be.

Pearl Lam: More economic, more economic, fewer works, much stronger.

Louisa Buck: I think it’s so interesting too that every day, Maggie, you do an ink brush painting, drawing in your studio with your left hand to get you started.

Maggi Hambling: Yes.

Pearl Lam: Oh, really? Using left hand. How wonderful.

Maggi Hambling: It’s like a pianist doing the scales, you know, because painting obviously is not just about color. It’s about the touch of the paint.

Pearl Lam: Yes.

Maggi Hambling: So I renew the sense of touch every morning in my sketchbook with ink. And I use the left hand because it can surprise me. I mean, after all these years, the right hand is full of tricks. So the left hand can surprise me.

Pearl Lam: What it does, one thing which really, you know, catch my eyes is when I see your painting. Because in Chinese we always have a word called Yuba which means leaving the white space. Because each paintings, it cannot be totally covered with paint because we always believe that you have to find Isla’s and finding the harmony painted space and the non painted space. I see many of your works except those black paintings. It’s all with this Yuba. It’s one thing that was really, you know, captivated me because I thought, wow, a western painter that’s doing this living white space painting because that was really pretty touching for me.

Maggi Hambling: Well, thank you. Thank you. I always used to leave, however much paint was on the canvas years ago. I always left a bare bit of canvas for Samuel Beckett, for Samuel waiting For Godot, you know.

Pearl Lam: Because these are the, I mean, these are the things that when you, when we have this chi, you know, when we’re doing the shows, I mean, your exhibition, your solar exhibition in, in China went and how to captivate people. Because this is a british artist, a woman artist doing british modern art, because at that time, before you had the show, no one even knew about british modern. And then when we, when we start saying to, oh, you know, francis Bacon, Louise Freud is also in. It’s also british modern.

Maggi Hambling: What Louisa?

Louisa Buck: I was just going to ask, I mean, you, you’ve seen so many artists, you work with so many artists. I’m obviously a huge fan of Maggie’s and have been for many decades, but I’m curious to know what it was when you first saw her work that really struck you. In fact, you did first see her work and why you want to work with her and wanted to work with her.

Pearl Lam: And actually, I first saw her work, you know, when we look at the british modern artist, of course we know about Maggie. And actually, first time I really see very close was when a really good friend, and also she’s the biggest fan of Maggie’s work, Jane Chow. And she did this whole exhibition in Hong Kong. So it was the first time I actually, you know, come close to, close to see the work. And I said, oh, my God, I, it feels like you were doing waves at the time. Right? And then I said, wow, there’s so much chinese aesthetic in that. And I thought Jane was very brave at the time because british modern has been very quiet. I mean, it was completely lost to the, to the YBA and was very quiet. And she actually mount a show in Hong Kong in an institution. So I thought, wow, that really gave me, because it’s the first time it comes so close looking at her work. So at that time, I already said, interesting. And then recently, when I saw what is going on, we have several things, which is very important. Diversity. The woman artist is coming up. And I remember one comment which, when, when Maggie show was in China, they said, oh, so when I mentioned that british modern artist Francis Bacon, is there any woman artist who said, of course there are. So they were really surprised about it. And I thought it was, it would be a right time to open a show about Maggie, especially during art basel Hong Kong time, because it’s not just about Hong Kong. It’s about the Asians. It’s about the international.

Louisa Buck: And you’re showing that great wall of water painting. Yeah, the great Wall. A new wall of water, isn’t it? That’s, I mean, it’s called edge xxx, but the sense of it being a revisiting of the sea that’s been so important to you, the energy, the turmoil, the tumultuousness.

Pearl Lam: The sea means very, I mean, something that it’s give you a kick, give you a big kick.

Maggi Hambling: Well, I know in films when you see a couple maneuvering around each other, and of course, there are no bed scenes. They just show the sea, the sea, the sea, the sea. The scene is supposed to be sex, I suppose, in all these films. Yeah, except they show a bit more nowadays.

Pearl Lam: Nowadays, much more. But there are other series. There’s a series called about a kiss. All right.

Louisa Buck: Sexy.

Pearl Lam: Sexy dreams, sexy dreams, sexy dreams.

Louisa Buck: I mean, this new exhibition of yours with Pearl, it’s so interesting because it’s so full of life and sex and drama. And of course, it comes after, you know, 2022. You had a terrible heart attack, and then you made your maelstrom paintings after the heart attack, sort of after the near death experience. And now it seems with these wonderful, sexy paintings and it’s colorful, colourful life color, you’ve really got your mojo back in terms of. In terms of mojo aspects.

Maggi Hambling: Well, I don’t know what to say.

Louisa Buck: Tell us about those sexy paintings, Maggie. What triggered them?

Maggi Hambling: They’re all from experience, of course.

Pearl Lam: I mean, never doubt a minute about that. But why now to register it? Why didn’t you do sexy dreams when you were younger? Why just now?

Maggi Hambling: Well, I remember waking up in the operation in New York after your heart attack. After my heart attack. And people were doing my chest with their hands, not with machines, with their hands. And I said to myself, well, either you’re going to live or you’re going to die. It was quite matter of fact. So I went back into another world. But the moment I was out, I mean, six weeks in hospital and then back in England, and the second day I was back, I was in the studio again. Because, you see, the studio is what I call real time, and all the rest is the rest. Whatever happens outside the studio door is just life. But, you know, when I’m alone in a studio trying to make something, and that’s why I have no sound on or anything like that, I’m trying to listen to what’s inside me.

Pearl Lam: There’s inside. You always are in conversation inside you. They’re always in conversation with you and how many inside people you have.

Maggi Hambling: George Mellie, who was the host of the television series, said I would go down in art history as Maggie Coffin Hambling.

Pearl Lam: Oh, we must talk about, about Maggie’s tv show.

Louisa Buck: Gallery.

Pearl Lam: Yeah, gallery. Because recently I was having a dinner with Gregor from Tate, and he said, yeah, our generation, we addicted to the show. Every week we will be watching the show, and Maggie Hamling is my icon. So they’re coming to your talks.

Louisa Buck: It was a great show, though. It was in the eighties, and it was called Gallery, and it was a detail of an artwork was given. It was a quiz show and a detail was given. And then the panelists had to decide what the detail was and where the work was. From. And this wonderful jazz singer, great friend of mine, great friend of Maggie’s, was the general Mc, and Maggie was the head of one panel and Frank Whitford the head of the other. And Maggie was absolutely, of course, magnificent. Smoking throughout, full of wonderful.

Pearl Lam: You can smoke in a tv show.

Maggi Hambling: So cool.

Louisa Buck: And guessing and guessing that. And guessing the details. I remember one, I was actually on it at one point with Maggie and the Art nun, now no longer with us, called Sister Wendy Beckett. So it was me, Maggie, and the.

Pearl Lam: Nun, Sister Wendy Beckett.

Louisa Buck: She was called Sister Wendy Beckett. And she was. Well, she was meant to be a kind of reclusive, solitary nun, but she was very gregarious when we met her, wasn’t she, Maggie? Imagine, I think you wore a dress for the first time in God knows how many years to be on the show with the nun.

Maggi Hambling: Well, I wasn’t going to be upstaged by a nun. I remember Louisa had a very tight t shirt across her tits.

Pearl Lam: Oh, you were. You were wearing a tight t shirt.

Maggi Hambling: And then I don’t remember Michelangelo. Michelangelo and Leonardo and everything going in all directions. And I had the nun next to me, and so. And I remember being in makeup and George Mellie coming into the makeup. I said, george, what are you doing here? You’re never here at this time. You’re so early. And he said, I couldn’t stand being blessed upstairs one more time.

Louisa Buck: But it was quite funny because Maggie said to me, I’m feeling rather nervous, darling. And I’m like, Maggie, I can’t believe this. You know, you’re on this show every week. You’re resplendent. She said, no, not the bloody show. I’m wearing a dress for the first time in 25 years, a gold lemon dress, which was worn, I have to say, by Elizabeth Welsh at the end of Derek Jarman’s the Tempes, the wonderful singer, when she sung stormy weather at the end so you could.

Maggi Hambling: Google it didn’t touch me anywhere. This frock, this dress, it had a train. It was extraordinary. And when the man came along with the microphones behind us and he looked down at my tits and said, I don’t know where we’re going to put that this week. I don’t know where we’re going to put it. And so the first words of Sister Wendy was, she leant across and she was very toothy. She leant across and said, don’t be so stupid. Put it out through her knickers. And that was the first thing she said to me.

Pearl Lam: I love it. My God, you guys have fun.

Louisa Buck: We try.

Maggi Hambling: Well, it was always fun.

Pearl Lam: Much more fun than now.

Louisa Buck: Yes, well, yes, I think the times have changed, but nonetheless, you’ve got this great show with pearls, so we’re looking forward to hearing more.

Pearl Lam: I mean, I would have loved to go to join that show with Sister Beckett.

Louisa Buck: Wendy Beckett, George, Mellie. They had all different. Different guests every. Every week, but Maggie and George and Frank, who was weirdly my old tutor when I was at college. They were. They were. They were like the three mainstays.

Maggi Hambling: And I remember, dear Frank came to me, came to me one week and said, I see you get a lot of letters. Are they. Is it fan mail? And I said, well, yes, Frank. And so he said, well, I don’t get any. So I said, well, I said, well, why don’t you try getting something wrong? Nobody likes anyone who’s as clever and gets everything right. Like, he said, oh, I couldn’t do that. I couldn’t do that. And then he started to wear bow ties like me, and he still didn’t get any fan letters.

Pearl Lam: How long did this show goes on?

Maggi Hambling: There were three series of it. We made ten programs in five days.

Pearl Lam: Wow, that’s speed.

Maggi Hambling: Yes. Go to Manchester, no to Bristol Harley television. Go to Bristol for five days. And it was pretty intense.

Pearl Lam: Five days.

Maggi Hambling: Well, five days. Two programs a day. And they just collect the money and run back to the studio.

Louisa Buck: But also you had. So you weren’t just being gorgeous. Funny, Maggie. Only you also had to keep trying to guess these wretched details of the paintings that they were showing. Is it in british art collections across the country?

Pearl Lam: Is it easy?

Maggi Hambling: No. I mean, for instance, Louisa said a little bit. They’d show one square inch of a painting and you’re supposed to guess the artist. And for Stubbs, they did one square inch of sky. And of course, I absolutely didn’t know what it was. And then the camera went back and there was a dirty great horse. So, of course, everyone in England knew that it was Stubbs. You know, it was pretty tricky.

Louisa Buck: It was tricky.

Maggi Hambling: And the scores. The scores were always sort of 95 points to Frank and three to Maggie.

Louisa Buck: No, but we won. We won. Our panel won. Our all woman panel won. I think because Sister Wendy was rather good at the old art.

Pearl Lam: Sister Wendy is brilliant.

Louisa Buck: She was quite good at that. Well, she had nothing much else to do. She was a reclusive nun in a caravan in Norfolk. So, you know.

Pearl Lam: In a caravan. Yes, she lives in the caravan.

Louisa Buck: Not anymore. She’s dead now.

Pearl Lam: I mean, she was living in what?

Maggi Hambling: And drink, my God, she could drink anyone under the table. And we all had this vision of her caravan getting higher and higher and higher from all the empty bottles underneath it.

Pearl Lam: Oh, mom. Maggie, do you think that homosexuality and feminism shape your work?

Maggi Hambling: Not at all.

Pearl Lam: Not at all.

Maggi Hambling: I mean, they. Sometimes they’ve had. For instance, the Tate had a show for queer artists. I mean, I think it’s irrelevant. I mean, I agree with Picasso when he said, we’re all partly male and partly female, and you’ve got to bring the whole thing together to make a work of art. And I think you might as well have shows of people with red hair and women’s art. Again, I know I was in the show at the Tate that was just by women. But, I mean, it’s sort of. When it’s just women’s art, I think a veil comes down between the person about to go to the show. There’s something inside their heads or says, well, these are my women. I mean, all that matters is whether the thing’s any good or not.

Pearl Lam: Exactly. I absolutely agree about.

Louisa Buck: I also think. I’m being devil’s advocate here, because I think feminism, sex, women, it feeds into artworks. But also, there are some shows. There’s a really good show, Tate, to Britain at the moment, called women in revolt. That’s a historical show about women from women’s art. Forgotten women, artists, black women, women all over the different parts of the country. And it’s a historical show, and it puts the spotlight on people who’ve been long forgotten. So it’s a historical show that you can then look at great work that you wouldn’t normally see. So I think it’s more complicated. I think reductive shows are just all women, all queer. Art is too crude, basically.

Pearl Lam: I really believe that every artists are different. There are artists who. Who wants to express themselves, the political view, the philosophical worldview. So they do different things. But I don’t think that one can judge whether you’re good artists or bad artists, because you’re not making conceptual art. Because conceptual art has to be politics, social, because they want artists to talk about politics, social. So society, philosophy.

Louisa Buck: I think all art is conceptual to an extent, because all art is about ideas, all art is about thoughts. But some art zeros much more in on wonderful boiling brushstrokes and what paint can be made to say or do. Some people work in different media, new technologies. I mean, art is a very broad church. But I think you’re right, Maggie. It’s got to be good. And, of course it has to be good. What’s good is the absolute gajillion dollar question. You know, I’m a keen advocate of old, and he terrible old white man. But Andre Breton, the pope of surrealism, who said when he saw a great work of art, he felt a cold wind brushing the temple. And I’m a big one for the cold wind brushing the temple. You kind of know in your guts, if something’s really great, then you have to think about why you think it’s great. And that’s a challenge as well. In my job, this is your job.

Pearl Lam: But everybody must have a different opinion. Right?

Louisa Buck: Of course.

Pearl Lam: But I think the whole world now is we have 99% our followers. If someone comes and say that your work is great, then everybody will say it’s great.

Maggi Hambling: Yes, yes.

Pearl Lam: And we had lack of opinions and own individuality. No confidence to say that, you know, disregard whatever people say. I love this.

Louisa Buck: But also there’s fashion. You know, you think of a great artist like Vermeer. You couldn’t hardly give them away 150 years ago, you know, I mean, history will out. There’s a lot about. Think about taste, about subjectivity of the market. Of course, you know, there’s a feeding frenzy of some trendy collector suddenly, like, of work and shows it in their. In their private collection. But, you know, ultimately, I’m quite darwinian about artwork. But it’s got to get seen. And that’s why I think it’s so good now that, you know, artists, artists of all different ethnic backgrounds, artists from different global continents, women artists, artists that didn’t get seen by the predominantly, you know, northern white, european american art world. That was the only kind of art that got any airplane. Now it’s opened up, we’ve still got to judge what’s good or not.

Pearl Lam: Yeah. With the social media as well. So, Maggie, when you were growing up being an artist, do you think that woman has been. I mean, being women artist, do you feel being discounted?

Maggi Hambling: Well, no. I could never understand all this argument about women’s art. Because in the sixties, when I was an art student, I mean, Bridget Riley represented England at the Venice Biennale. So I, you know, one had that in mind, and I thought, why are they making such a fuss?

Pearl Lam: Yeah, 1960s already, Bridge the yeah, but you.

Louisa Buck: Looked at how many women that were in the collection of national museums. You looked at how many galleries represented women artists. They were minimal, so a few always got through because they were fantastic.

Pearl Lam: They’re much less women artists than male artists as well.

Louisa Buck: Well, I think there’s a whole lot of issues. We could have a whole podcast about it. You know, you’ve got many more women art students or as many women art students in art schools as males, but then it falls off. And actually, who can make a living from being artists and who gets represented by galleries and collected by museums? It’s getting better, but that’s when the whole thing changes. And then a whole lot of other stuff comes to play. Socio economics, having babies, you know, all this stuff.

Maggi Hambling: When I was at Camberwell, there was a stupid feeling that one had to be not only as good as the boys, but better.

Louisa Buck: I think that was legitimate. I think you were, you know, not given the same kind of airplane attention, I mean, quite a lot of sexual attention, I think, in these art schools towards women by the male tutors. But, you know, I think that’s a legitimate feeling. I mean, it was not right, but that was the way it was.

Maggi Hambling: The way it was.

Pearl Lam: But I think it’s a different. A different generation. Do you think now we’re completely different?

Louisa Buck: Not completely different, but I think the tide is turning. I look at the world. I mean, in my day, you used to talk about a woman artist. You never talk about a male artist, you know, and I think that doesn’t happen anymore. I think things are changing and certainly in terms of diversity. And it had to take something hideous, like the death, you know, the Black lives matter, the kicking off of all that to make the tide change. But it is changing, but a lot of it is socio economic. You know, kids from certain backgrounds don’t have the bank of mum and dad to go to art school. You know, it’s not a career where you can make money. It’s being discounted, certainly in the british education system. So, you know, it’s harder to become an artist if you come from a less privileged background. That’s a given, of course.

Pearl Lam: And also the parents will be pushing.

Louisa Buck: You to find to be a doctor or a lawyer or a proper job, you know, a job that has immediate income. So it’s very tricky and it’s very complicated. And I think the tide is turning. But we have to be super vigilant because there’s a long way to go.

Pearl Lam: Maggie, when you’re teaching, when you see your students, do you think that as a now there are much more women student, female students and they’re male student?

Maggi Hambling: Yes, I think there are more female students now, yes.

Pearl Lam: And are they more determined to be an artist or they just want to study and have a degree?

Maggi Hambling: Well, I think you know, if you’re going to do it, you’re going to do it, even if it’s in a lavatory. I mean, people have grand ideas about having big studios and things, but, I mean, I think if you’re going to do it, it’s a compulsion to do. You have to have determination. When I know when I was. When I was 14 and I came top in the art exam at school, and I mean, actually in that exam, I’d done nothing but flick paint at people and draw attention to myself because I was deeply in love with biology mistress, who was in charge of the examined. Anyway, and I suddenly saw the clock and it was 03:20 and I knew at 03:30 I got a hand in a painting. So I did one and then the results came out and I was top of art. And I thought, this is very odd, I must look into this business. And I remember the art teacher telling me, took me to one side and said, look, however poor you are, you could always afford a bit of paper and a pencil. And that made sense to me.

Pearl Lam: Wow. And did your parents go against you being an artist?

Maggi Hambling: They weren’t terribly keen on the idea, but I’d got them trained by then.

Pearl Lam: Wow. Wow. I love it. How do you train them? How do you condition them in saying to be supportive of your art career?

Maggi Hambling: Well, my mother always said I was the most obstinate child she’d ever come across and she was a teacher. And I did ask for the complete works of Oscar Wilde for my 12th birthday.

Pearl Lam: Yeah, I read about that.

Maggi Hambling: And so I got them trained by them.

Louisa Buck: But I love what you always say about how the role that art plays in your life and the fact that it’s your constant companion, the making of art from. Right, from when you had the pencil and paper as you were a small child. But that advice that you were given with one of your early mentors.

Maggi Hambling: Yes. And I remembered Uncle Tom’s cabin at my first school. Uncle Tom’s cabin was read to us, and the fashion at the time was making patterns in old arithmetic books which were full of squares, you know, and if you had a gold crayon, you’re absolutely it. But I remember listening to the. What was being read to us, and it was very much about slaves being beaten, and I remember trying to draw the slaves being beaten, so I was always a bit odd.

Louisa Buck: But you’ve always said your art is there at your elbow in your.

Maggi Hambling: Well, Henry Moore said it was all therapy, and of course, it is all therapy, definitely. And particularly this thing. I mean, why George said, Maggie Coffin hambling. Is that when. I mean, when someone dies that you love? You know, I think, being an artist, I’m very lucky because it’s a positive way of grieving. I mean, I painted George merely for two years after he died, you know, and all the portraits of him, of course, I’m trying to make as alive as possible. And I remember when the lorry came to pick up all the paintings to go to the. This gallery in Manchester. And I came up here the next morning and I looked around and all the walls. There were nothing on the walls. And I said, you’ve got to face it. George is dead.

Pearl Lam: You were very close to George Malley, right?

Maggi Hambling: Yes. Not as quite as close as Louisa.

Louisa Buck: But I nearly married him. But that was.

Pearl Lam: Oh, you nearly married him. My God.

Louisa Buck: I want to ask you, Maggie, about the show at pearls called the night. Why you’ve chosen that title. You were talking about Maggie coughing the hamling. But the night for you, something that’s much more intimate and mysterious. Well, it’s not.

Maggi Hambling: Well, doom, when I came top in the arctic zone when I was 14. And I remember staying up until 02:00 in the morning trying to paint the night sky out of my bedroom window. And I took the paintings into school the next day, and they were all sort of laid out, and the other girls were just laughing at them. And the art teacher, Yvonne Drury, who was a proper practicing artist, came into the room and I was in the corner on the point of tears, and she said, what’s the matter? And I said, well, I was up till 02:00 in the morning trying to paint the night sky, and everyone’s just laughing at them. And she said, look, it has to be water off a duck’s back. What anyone ever says about your work, take no notice. You’re your own best critic.

Louisa Buck: Great advice.

Pearl Lam: Great advice.

Maggi Hambling: Fantastic.

Pearl Lam: Great advice at such a young age as well.

Louisa Buck: Yes, but the night stayed with you and these new works you’ve been making.

Maggi Hambling: Yes, I thought I’d go back to the beginning and try and paint the night sky again. After all, I can’t bear to think how many years since I was 14. Quite a few.

Pearl Lam: Do you keep all your work since you were young, like 14 years old?

Maggi Hambling: No, I mean, I destroy a lot of work. And, no, I haven’t got many very early things. No, I think it was all thrown away.

Pearl Lam: Last time when I visited you, you told me that you were having very nice dinner with Cecily Brown, and then you have a heart attack.

Maggi Hambling: Absolutely. I just had one whiskey. And everything went completely blanken. And I remember Hugh looking across the room and saying, something’s happened to Maggie. And then, because it was New York, the ambulance came straight away, and I was in Mount Sinai for six weeks. So it was all terrible, you know.

Pearl Lam: Does it change you after this had. Beside not smoking?

Maggi Hambling: You’ll notice everyone that I’m not smoking.

Pearl Lam: Not smoking.

Maggi Hambling: You know about the sea paintings. I remember as a child walking into the sea and talking to the sea as if it was my friend. I can’t swim, but I walked into the sea and talked to it. And now I try to listen to the sea. Do you see what I mean? It’s all changed. And I think I’ve always worked very hard and been in my studio every day. But obviously, as one gets a tiny bit older, there seems like less and less time. Less and less time, and so one has to really go for it.

Pearl Lam: And then does it change a little with your painting? You know, you always have this def. Reoccurring themes. What are you think? Do you think about death?

Maggi Hambling: I think about death every day. Yes. Yes.

Pearl Lam: Do you think death is beautiful?

Maggi Hambling: I don’t want it to happen yet.

Louisa Buck: But there’s the joke about George Mellie calling you Maggie coffin Hamling. And in the studio, there’s a beautiful painting of Henrietta Mrez, one of your great muses, in her coffin. One of your last. One of your recent shows in Gainsborough’s house in Suffolk was very much about matters of death. We have a skull over here, but there seems to be also a very kind of. The energy. The energy, even with your paintings of dead people, is still palpably there. So it’s a double edged situation, it seems to me, with this exhibition, too, being called the night. But night is. The darkness is something positive and energetic coming out of it as well, it seems.

Maggi Hambling: Thank you.

Louisa Buck: A pleasure. But just to talk a little bit about that, because I think it is interesting you have this near death experience. You made these works, it’s run through your work, remembering, knowing about death, but life is absolutely there. And in these sexy new paintings as well.

Pearl Lam: Yeah, sexy about sexy dreams.

Maggi Hambling: Don’t know what to say.

Louisa Buck: You make what you make, but it comes. What made you want to make these?

Maggi Hambling: Life dictates what I paint. I mean, the painting of Gulf women prepare for war. That’s in Cambridge. It was a newspaper photograph of these women in the middle of the desert in what seemed to me to be biblical costumes. I mean, you see it everywhere now, but you didn’t then. In the eighties, and so these three women in seemingly biblical attire, practicing with these enormous rocket launchers. And it was just a little black and white photograph in the newspaper. But it impelled me to do something about it. I mean, you can’t tell things.

Pearl Lam: It just propel you or inspired you to do.

Maggi Hambling: Yes. And that art teacher at school said the very important thing, that the subject chooses the artist, not the artist, the subject.

Pearl Lam: It’s true.

Maggi Hambling: And then a painting can only move someone else, inasmuch as the artist has been moved when they make it. And the thing about oil paint is, which I think it can do. I mean, in great paintings, Rothko, Cy Twombly, you know, you feel as if you’re there at the point of it being made, which is something that oil paint can do, which nothing else can do. I mean, there could be very moving photographs, for instance. But inevitably, photographs are the recorded moment, just a recorded moment, and it’s in history, and they’re always behind glass and politely, but it always has happened. Whereas with an oil painting, like the last painting of Titian, I mean, you feel as if you’re there while the artist is making it. And I think that’s the magic that art can do.

Pearl Lam: Beautiful, beautiful way to interpret it.

Louisa Buck: I mean, we always think firstly, or I do at least about Maggie, you with paint, your love affair with paint, the gorgeous, energetic paintings that you make. But also you’ve made some amazing sculptures. You’ve made public sculpture, you make private sculptures. In your new show upcoming, there’s a revisited version of some of your other sculptures that painted white so they become like spectres. And then this other new commission as well, with beauty papers as solid cast silver sculpture. Can you talk a bit about what impels you to make sculpture and how it relates to, and how it’s different from your paintings? I mean, it’s a three dimensional medium, but you embraced it.

Maggi Hambling: My sculpture always seems to make more fuss than my paintings. The Oscar Wilde.

Pearl Lam: Yeah, the Oscar Wilde.

Maggi Hambling: The Oscar Wilde, I mean, caused enormous.

Pearl Lam: Why? Just because you did not put Oscar Wilde on a plymouth.

Maggi Hambling: Exactly. He was a man of the people.

Pearl Lam: Yeah, exactly.

Maggi Hambling: You know, he cared about humanity. I mean, and if to put him up with camp hands on a. Oh.

Pearl Lam: He’s not these, these fighting war hero. One of the things that I’ve read is about, they say, oh, this Oscar Wilde is jumping off, is coming, rising from a coffin. It’s not a coffin.

Maggi Hambling: Right, so sarcophagus. Yes.

Pearl Lam: And then he said, coming up and there’s no respect. And, you know, he’s not being worshipped. Why should you worship?

Louisa Buck: But the thing about these sculptures is these are public sculptures. So people, they do cause a huge fuss. It’s incredibly brave for artists to put that work out there, but also gajillion more people see them because they’re there in the public realm. So people have opinions.

Pearl Lam: Contemporary art is about controversy. Well, I mean, it’s great to have.

Louisa Buck: Controversy, I think if things are. The point that I’m making, though, is that, you know, many of Maggie’s sculptures are in the private realm. In galleries, they’re smaller scale. They’re also very large scale. But these few public sculptures are like lightning rods for people’s opinions, their prejudices, their feelings about art, life. Oscar Wilde, Benjamin Britten, Mary Williams, Croft, whoever. And that. That’s a whole other aspect that I think, you know, public sculpture has that a more private kind of sculpture.

Pearl Lam: I think one of the things I read about Maggie is Maggie is saying that, you know, why, you know, she said that you need to have artistic freedom to make public sculpture. Absolutely right. Because this, his is her interpretation of the person, her interpretation of an. Why should people just judge?

Louisa Buck: Well, no, but I think people are allowed to have their opinions. I think it’s not great when they don’t like it, but it’s important.

Maggi Hambling: I mean, there’s the obvious thing, that sculpture confronts people more than paintings. I mean, you can go into a gallery and just look around and say, oh, I hate these, and leave. But a sculpture shares the space with you looking at it, you know, and so it’s more confrontational, I think there were 13 lots of graffiti on scallop. The one in Aldborough by the sea.

Pearl Lam: Oh, this is near you there.

Maggi Hambling: Yeah, yeah.

Louisa Buck: And when did you start making sculpture, Maggie?

Maggi Hambling: About 1993.

Louisa Buck: Quite late on.

Pearl Lam: Quite late.

Maggi Hambling: Yes, yes. I was. I was painting, it’s a series of laugh paintings, and I realized I was trying more and more to paint an object in space, so I started to try and make the objects in space. And, you know, the latest one, the Mary Wollstonecraft. Yes. And, you know, it’s a naked figure and a friend of mine. Is it naked silver figure at the top of the sculpture there is a naked woman confronting the world. Yes. And it’s for Mary Wollstonecraft. It’s not of Mary Wollstonecraft. And a great friend of mine, the writer Paul Bailey, always watches the Channel Four news, which finishes at 08:00 and I remember that Tuesday when the sculpture sort of hit the world. He telephoned me and said, my God. He said, you have put the pussy among the pigeons this time, which was great. And I was leaving my local waitrose that same week, and one of the very jolly Suffolk ladies gave me a big grin and said, been making trouble again, I see. But I don’t set out to be controversial. It just happens. But if it’s controversial, it shows. It’s got a bit of life to it.

Pearl Lam: I think controversy is crazy.

Louisa Buck: I agree.

Pearl Lam: You mean you have everybody talking about it? Why not? This is free advertisement. I think that’s the greatest thing because it makes people think. It creates a topic for discussion and it’s really important. I think in this, in this world, you have to see something and people has to feel and they have to discuss what are your real, well, arts part?

Louisa Buck: As I said before, art’s part of life, you know, good, bad, ugly, warts and all. And I think people encounter it. And the more people that can encounter art, the better it is for them. Whatever their feelings or responses.

Pearl Lam: I think it will be very exciting that Maggie is showing the paintings and sculpture together in Hong Kong. So I think it brings, I really hope that the international people are coming back this time at Basel, because it will be more international. It will be a great platform for a chinese gallery to do, a Hong Kong gallery to do british modernization. There’s no, there’s none of the galleries and a woman artist, but british.

Louisa Buck: But so interesting though, isn’t it, that, you know, Maggie made regular pilgrimages to the british museum looking at ink, calligraphy, chinese, japanese paintings. But also many people have commented that many of Maggie’s sculptures have a kind of affinity to chinese scholar scholars.

Pearl Lam: But actually, when you walk into his, her exhibition in the museum, you, you don’t know whether this is by chinese artist or no. Then they say, oh, it’s a british artist.

Maggi Hambling: Oh, my God, they have a lot of hair.

Pearl Lam: Lots of hair. Yeah, she was on the, all these social media is with her. Everybody was taking pictures with her, all on the social media and that. It’s quite funny, actually.

Maggi Hambling: I remember the last selfie I had to do. I had to hold a teddy bear. I thought, this is really the end.

Louisa Buck: That’s the price of fame.

Pearl Lam: Maggie, thank you so much. Thank you so much for the two ladies. And I feel so honoured to have you all.

Maggi Hambling: Thank you, thank you, thank you. I’m very excited about the show.