MAGGI HAMBLING

When my mother came back from the hospital, she apologised to my nine-year-old brother that I was a girl. He had so badly wanted a brother that he took no notice at all of the fact that I wasn't and brought me up as one. He taught me carpentry, how to wring chickens' necks and all that useful stuff.... Those skills have proved to be much more useful than the things girls are usually taught.

My perversity was there from an early age. I was very fond of my teddy bear, despite my treatment of the doll. I'd lusted over it for a long while in the toyshop because it was the only blue bear I'd ever seen. So, rather perversely, I called it 'Toffee.'

I have to put mascara on, that's my war paint. It's a defence. I'm really a tiny, shy little thing. I like to choose who eats me up rather than other people choosing to do it to me.

I'm most alive when I'm in my studio working. The real me is there and the rest is showbiz. Showbiz is exactly the opposite of being alone in the studio, trying to make something.

All artists should be riddled with self-doubt. I think there's something wrong with a creative person if they're not plagued by it more or less the whole time.

My art is a filter between me and life. Artists do have to stand back to make their response to what's around them, whether it's people or the sea or anything else.

I've always been quite envious of people who've just lived, like Henrietta Moraes, who became my Muse. She just lived; she was an artist of life.

Art is quite a masochistic business, really. But the feeling when things go right is unlike any other. You learn to accept that there are good days and bad days. Sometimes I can spend six months on a painting and have to destroy it, and that is pretty depressing. But it has to be done so that that same painting can possibly happen in an hour and a half, probably the next day. It wouldn't happen if I hadn't been through all the rubbish first.