In the dead of night last spring, as rain fell in stubborn sheets upon the Sussex countryside, 79-year-old artist Maggi Hambling trudged with a group of friends to an opening in the forest where nightingales sang and folk musician Sam Lee led an accompaniment on guitar and violin. Hambling, having survived a near-fatal heart attack in New York the previous year followed by a bleak period of recovery, was suddenly overwhelmed by a feeling of hope and experienced something akin to a spiritual epiphany. This month, she is sharing it with the world.
Maggi Hambling: Nightingale Night is the artist’s pivotal new exhibition at Pallant House Gallery. The striking dark paintings feature abstract splashes of gold paint – representing both purity and the divine – and reference bird and human song, inspired by the likes of Nick Cave, Leonard Cohen and even a Nina Simone concert she attended in Harlem. Over 50 years into her career, Hambling continues to push the boundaries of her practice with remarkable intensity.
“I still work every day. My art is my life,” she says. Infused with the life experience that comes from decades at the coalface, the work of important female artists in their seventies and eighties is experiencing something of a renaissance.
Finally, these women are being recognised and celebrated by the art world ecosystem of galleries, auction houses and museums. This hasn’t always been the case. Throughout the history of Western art, the contribution of women ha.
