Artist's show brings £20000 charity lift

Suffolk artist Maggi Hambling has helped raise more than £20,000 for two charities by an exhibition of her latest works in the home of a friend - fine art dealer David Case.

Suffolk artist Maggi Hambling has helped raise more than £20,000 for two charities by an exhibition of her latest works in the home of a friend - fine art dealer David Case.

Twenty three of her paintings - impressions of North Sea waves - were sold at the exhibition which was staged in the Old Rectory at Brockdish. An illustrated talk by the artist about her life and work also attracted a sell-out audience in the village hall.

Half the money raised will go to a trust set up in memory of Mr Case's daughter, Laura, who was killed in a road accident in Uganda where she was working as a medical student. The other half will go to the parish church in the family's home village of Brockdish.

The Laura Case Trust is primarily aimed at helping to improve medical care in Uganda and elsewhere in Africa.

Mr Case said: “I had hoped we might raise £5,000 but in the event we raised more than £20,000. All the buyers were local and not Maggi's collectors.”

Prior to the exhibition and talk, about £25,000 had been raised for the trust by events and donations for the charity and 80 per cent had been spent in Africa. Part of the money had gone on shipping 20 medical beds to the hospital in Kisiizi where Laura had been working at the time of her death.

“Beds are a scarce resource in rural hospitals in Africa. The lack of such a simple piece of equipment was one of the things that Laura was most aware of while she worked there,” Mr Case said.

The charity was also helping a project aimed at training police officers and taxi drivers to be paramedics - because of the shortage of ambulances in Africa - and to fund the training of a medical student aiming to work in a remote rural area in Uganda.

Mr Case has known Ms Hambling for many years and previously displayed her work at four major exhibitions at the Marlborough Gallery in London.

He said: “The exhibition comprised new oil paintings and Maggi's first small acrylics on paper, where the waves become jewel-like in their intensity, and in their concentration of energy and colour.

The artist, best known for her controversial Scallop sculpture on Aldeburgh beach, told the audience in Brockdish Village hall that she went down to the beach at Aldeburgh or Sizewell early each morning to sketch - trying to capture the motion of the waves.