Maggi Hambling

Artist Maggi Hambling is a painter known for evocative portraits, and powerfully energetic seascapes of the Suffolk coastline where she grew up. She’s also a sculptor, whose public artworks, including tributes to Oscar Wilde, Benjamin Britten and more recently Mary Wollstonecraft, have been the focus of both acclaim and controversy.

She tells John Wilson about her unconventional family life in Suffolk, discovering her artistic talent as child and studying with the East Anglian school of painting under Sir Cedric Morris and Arthur Lett-Haines. She explains how Rembrandt's portraits were a major influence on her own work, and reveals how a trip to New York in 1969 proved to be a formative experience, not least because she found herself at the legendary Woodstock Festival that year. She also speaks candidly about how painting family members and close friends after they have died, including both her parents and her partner in their coffins, helped keep their memory alive for her.

Producer: Edwina Pitman