Maggi Hambling at 80: what next?

‘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 2025, 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.’

Hambling sees herself as a vessel through which the paint passes. ‘It’s all about the eye, the hand and the heart,’ she says. ‘The heart is the most important thing. The good paintings paint themselves. I don’t feel that I’m any part of them. I only feel responsible for the bad ones, which I get rid of. I can do a good painting in three-quarters of an hour, but I couldn’t do that unless I’ve done all this shit for three years before.’

The book features a collection of Hambling’s portraits of those she painted, from memory, after they died – a body of work that has included her parents, her late partner of 40 years, Tory Lawrence, and her close friend Derek Jarman. In these portraits, Hambling is making sense of the loss. ‘When somebody you love dies, they go on being alive inside of you. I remember I went on painting George [Melly, the jazz musician and close friend who died in 2007] for a couple of years after he died, with as much life as possible. And then the lorry came and collected all the portraits to take them to the Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool, and the next morning they had all gone. And I said to myself, you have got to face it, George is dead.’

The significance of her friendships is central to Hambling’s oeuvre, making the new show with Lucas a natural next step. The duo have depicted each other in their work before, Hambling in oil, Lucas in the mischievous sculpture Maggi (2012), composed of a coat hanger, light bulbs and toilet bowl. 'Sarah and I met about 20 years ago. I think we were introduced in the Colony [Room Club in Soho] by Sebastian Horsley, on our birthday, which we share. We just fell into each other’s arms and had a big hug. And that was that. I had always liked her the best of the YBA [Young British Artists] because of the guts and humour of her work. She came to live in Suffolk, and that’s where we became great friends.’

This year, on their shared birthday of 23 October, Hambling turned 80. How does she feel about that? ‘I feel about 15,’ she says. It’s not an age she necessarily expected to see, after a near-fatal heart attack in New York in 2022 left her hospitalised for six weeks. ‘I owe my life to New York. If it had happened in Suffolk, I’d still be waiting for the ambulance. I remember waking up when they were pressing their hands on my chest. I thought, either you’re going to live or you’re going to die. And I went back into another world.’

On her return home, Hambling resumed work, reconnecting with her war paintings, on which she started in 1986 after seeing a photograph in The Times of Arab women dressed in burqas, teetering under the weight of rocket launchers. A surreal contrast, it tied into the extremes she is drawn to, and which run throughout her war works, where life and death exist side-by-side with beauty and violence. ‘When I got home from the hospital, I thought I was painting the war in Ukraine, but everybody told me I’d been painting my heart attack. I don’t know. I suppose they’re right. It was absolute hell without any cigarettes.’

Her work subtly shifted after the heart attack. ‘As I get older, I try to say more with less.’ Increasingly on her canvases, there is an expanse of empty space. ‘I always used to leave a little bit of blank canvas, inspired by Samuel Beckett, who I think is the greatest artist of the 20th century. But now there’s much more – it’s that Eastern thinking that you’ve got to be as eloquent with where you don’t put a mark as with where you do.’

Hambling is disciplined with her work, getting up early every morning without fail. In the afternoon, she catches up on TV soap Coronation Street, which she is passionate about (although, ‘two people kiss and every time the other person sees them, it’s so unreal, it’s unbelievable,’ she complains). The first thing she does every day is make a drawing in her sketchbook with her left hand (she is right handed). ‘And I’ve only got three fingers,’ says Hambling, holding up her right hand to show the absence of a little finger. (She fell down the stairs in Suffolk one night while holding a glass of water.) ‘I shake hands with people and they don’t notice. It’s quite disappointing, really.’ She adds it hasn’t really changed anything; she works with both hands.

Hambling may have a reputation for being outspoken, but she doesn’t set out to be controversial, she says. The sculptures (including the Oscar Wilde statue near Trafalgar Square in central London, a scallop sculpture on Aldeburgh beach in Suffolk, and the Mary Wollstonecraft sculpture in Newington Green, London) are naturally more antagonistic than the paintings.

‘They are different because they challenge you in your space,’ explains Hambling. ‘All the feminists were so cross when I was chosen to do Mary Wollstonecraft. I don’t know if feminists don’t have bodies or something. I don’t understand it – she represents the struggles women have always faced, and she’s confronting the world.’ She based the much-debated decision to depict the 18th-century writer and philosopher naked on the fact that clothes would date the figure (‘When it hit the world, my friend rang up and said, you have put the pussy among the pigeons, which was a very good remark I thought,’ she says).

Does criticism bother her? ‘My teacher at art school said criticism has to be water off a duck’s back. You’re your own best critic. Some people think I’m rather scary, but my students know I’m just a jelly baby, really.’

‘Maggi Hambling and Sarah Lucas: OOO LA LA’ is on show from 20 November 2025 – 24 January 2026 at Sadie Coles HQ and Frankie Rossi Art Projects, sadiecoles.com frankierossiart.com

‘Maggi Hambling’ ($75, Rizzoli) is published on 11 November, rizzoliusa.com

This article appears in the December 2025 Entertaining Issue of Wallpaper* , available in print on newsstands, on the Wallpaper* app on Apple iOS, and to subscribers of Apple News + from 6 November. Subscribe to Wallpaper* today