An unlikely pairing. Hambling & Lowry.

On the eve of an exhibition that pairs Maggi Hambling with LS Lowry, Hambling talks to Jessica Lack about the influence of the sea in her abstract paintings – and the parallels between hers and Lowry’s work

When was the first time you saw a seascape by LS Lowry?

It was a painting hanging in the drawing room of a friend of mine in Oxfordshire. I always found myself looking at it because I found it so hypnotic. This sense of time having stood still, it was quite ominous really and he painted these waves built up in ridges, it was a threatening thing, but I found my eyes constantly going back and forth between the horizon line and the foreground. It was by far the best thing I had ever seen by him. I was amazed by it.

He is best known for his industrial paintings but I agree, his seascapes are much more compelling.

I have no interest in his cityscapes. His seascapes are more serious, they are much more challenging and because there are no people in them, they speak directly to us without these little figures hopping about and getting in the way. They are much more direct, economical and powerful.

They are very still and not how I imagine the sea to be at all, and certainly not like your own paintings of the sea.

He must have always hit a calm day. Yes, you are right they are in complete contrast to mine, which is why I imagine The Lowry invited me to do this show. I suppose you would say I am interested in the action of the waves.

Is that what you hope will come across in the show, this contrast?

Yes, although the subject is the same, the way in which we work with the sea is in total contrast. In terms of scale, Lowry’s paintings are quite small while some of mine are 8ft by 9ft and I am showing sculptures of waves for the first time and etchings that have not been seen before. There are one or two early paintings from the late 1970s then there is a long gap when I didn’t paint the sea at all. Then I began again in 2002. I was commissioned to make a sculpture for Aldeburgh beach [Scallop, dedicated to Benjamin Britten] and it was out of making the maquettes for that, that I began painting the sea again. I’ve been obsessed with it ever since.

I often think Lowry brought something of that industrial grime and heaviness to his paintings of the sea.

Perhaps they are in need of a clean! No, I see what you are saying, they are very heavy aren’t they? In my paintings I try to get the speed with which the approaching wave becomes solid and then shatters, and it’s all very sexy as far as I am concerned, but I hope I get across the lightness of the waves breaking. But Lowry is about the weight, everything feels like it’s a hundredweight, even the sky feels like a hundredweight, no, make that several tons. A ton of sky, a ton of sea. I suppose if you wanted to give it an old fashioned term you would say he paints the middle distance, whereas I’m out front.

Sometimes I think his seas look like a large pond…

Or a brown field.

I find your paintings can be quite frightening, while Lowry’s look more prosaic. They are more like a paddle.

Yes, I like that, mine are a swim and Lowry’s are a paddle. But not all my paintings are frightening, at least I don’t think so. When you see all that sexy oil paint in the flesh, I don’t think you will find them frightening. Of course the sea is frightening, I think I’ve said it before that I see the sea as a great mouth that is ripping up and changing the shore and there is nothing we can do about it. The sea is like the time, and the erosion is all part of it, particularly in East Anglia where it is changing the whole contour of the land.

Is there a particular place that you always go to paint?

I am a Suffolk person, I grew up there and the Suffolk Sea (which is what I call it) is the sea I love, and I go down to the beach very early in the morning with my sketchbook before everyone else is around, and then return to my studio to paint. You get used to the shingle being in one place and the next day it has changed drastically. I’m not an expert on global warming, although recently I have been making paintings about the icecap melting, but when I was a child in Suffolk the sea seemed to always be in the same place, now it is in a state of constant flux.

The Sea: LS Lowry & Maggi Hambling opens on 17 October at The Lowry (until 31 January 2010). Free entry. Jessica Lack is an arts writer for The Guardian; she also writes for various magazines including Dazed and Confused and ID Magazine. Her book Tate Guide to Modern Art Terms, written in collaboration with Simon Wilson, was recently published by Tate Publishing and she is currently working on a book about a composer for Fourth Estate.

Images (top to bottom): Sunrise, December (2008), Maggi Hambling, courtesy the artist. Wave Crashing, March (2009), Maggi Hambling, courtesy the artist.

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