BOLD STROKES

Maggi Hambling celebrates her 80th birthday with a joint London exhibition with close friend Sarah Lucas and a new Rizzoli monograph

- HANNAH SILVER

I do agree with Matisse, who said artists should have their tongues cut out for the amount of rot they talk,’ says Maggi Hambling.

Self-effacing, yes, shrewd, sharp and unfailingly honest - but there's no worry of any rot from the revered, respected, and often feared, Hambling.

When we visit her in October, in the south London home she has lived and worked in for 40 years, the artist is about to turn 80. She will mark this milestone with both a joint exhibition with good friend Sarah Lucas at Sadie Coles HQ and Frankie Rossi Art Projects in London, and the release of an illustrated monograph of works from a five-decade career, from her 1960s studies at the East Anglian School of Painting and Drawing to her recent politically and emotionally charged war paintings.

Leafing through the book, one gets a sense of Hambling's far-reaching practice, with painting and sculptures wrestling with recurring themes, including the power of nature, war, love and death. Throughout, she is drawn to duality, in ghostly and powerful sea paintings, and in brilliantly alive portraits of loved ones after their death.

Hambling's oil paintings have the quality of transcending time. Her war paintings eschew contemporary references, meaning they are difficult to place. ‘In the right hands, oil paint has this capacity to make it seem that something is being made in front of you,’ says Hambling. ‘Oil paint is very sexy stuff, and you have to make love with it.’