'I was born in Suffolk, grew up here, and now spend most of my time here. The ground under my feet and the air I breathe are in my blood so Suffolk feels right, and remains a crucial part of making my work.
'As a child, I wanted to go to Clacton in Essex but my mother, being a bit of a snob, took me to the beach at Frinton. As a toddler I would walk into the sea and talk to it, ten to the dozen, as if it were my friend.
'I realise now that the seed of my sculpture Scallop, which stands by the sea at Aldeburgh, was sown inside me when I was seven. My cousins and I were taken there to watch the fireworks celebrating the Queen's Coronation in 1953. All those explosions in the night sky above the waves were hugely exciting. Scallop is my tribute to the composer Benjamin Britten who lived and worked in Aldeburgh and I hope the sculpture expresses my response to his explosive music. I wasn't commissioned, it was my idea to make it and some people are quite cross I did. But others love it — some have apparently got married there, others have made love underneath it, and it's always covered with children. Quite extraordinary.
'Late in 2002, during the pause between making the maquette for Scallop and its realisation, I started painting the sea, which I continue to do. Early in the morning I go there with my sketchbook, and draw the waves breaking. Sometimes it's still almost dark and no one else is about.
'I like the sea at Sizewell — the seabed causes strange waves. I draw at the Slaughden end of Aldeburgh where the Martello tower stands (one of the line of defensive towers built during the 1800s). The village of Slaughden, where Britten's opera Peter Grimes is set, has long since disappeared under the water. You go along a spit of land with the North Sea on one side and Snape marshes on the other, feeling as if you are on the edge of the world.
'As I get older, I identify with the shore where the sea erodes the land just as time erodes life. But it isn't all doom and gloom. The sea is very sexy — a wave approaches, reaches a climactic moment, first solid, then dissolving in front of me. As a subject it has everything going for it. I don't talk to the sea any more. I now try to listen.'
The Aldeburgh Scallop by Maggi Hambling is published this month (£20, Full Circle Editions).
