Maggi Hambling, Stephen Fry
9 May – 10 June 2007
In this exhibition of drawings and sketchbooks, Maggi Hambling
achieves a potent language of marks. Variously lent by the
Ashmolean Museum, the British Museum, the Tate and the artist
herself, the drawings range from the powerful Rhinoceros in Ipswich
Museum, 1963, done when she was seventeen, to drawings of herself
and her dog Lux dating from this year.
Hambling notes: “Drawing is an artist’s most
direct and intimate response to the world. The touch of charcoal,
graphite or ink on paper is full of endless possibilities. I try to
distil the essence of a subject and capture the life-force of a
moment.”
Hambling was born in Suffolk in 1945, and trained at Ipswich
School of Art, Camberwell School of Art and the Slade School of
Fine Art. She was the first artist-in-residence at the National
Gallery in 1980-81, and won the Jerwood Painting Prize in 1995.
The exhibition has been toured by the Fitzwilliam Museum,
Cambridge and is accompanied by a catalogue, supported by
Marlborough Fine Art. Some of the framed works are for sale,
likewise a portfolio of hitherto never-seen drawings of the
sea. The exhibition runs until 10 June.