Maggi Hambling: Maelstrom

Maelstrom comprises a new series of paintings by Maggi Hambling, made on her return to the studio following a near-fatal heart attack in New York in March 2022, two days prior to an exhibition of her work opening there.

During her six-week stay in a Manhattan hospital, the artist’s six-decade daily practice came to a halt. On the second day of her return to the UK, the Maelstrom series began. The resulting paintings are testaments to the tentative, determined resumption of her daily practice – and to the trauma of recovery. Having been closer to death than ever before, Hambling returned to her art with renewed urgency and force. The paintings manifest intense landscapes of experience – each is a portrait of where the heart and mind go when the body is compromised – a realm at once mysterious and challenging, sublime and intimate. Hambling’s Maelstrom paintings affirm, ultimately, what it means to be alive.