A huge success and I love it Tracey Emin: the woman who became a professional artist at the age of 88 – and became famous on Instagram | Art and design

IDuring his four decades as a curator, publisher and gallerist, Matthew Higgs supported the careers of many artists, including his contemporaries Jeremy Deller, Martin Creed and Peter Doig when they emerged in the early 1990s.

Higgs also supports artists from alternative backgrounds – those who are self-taught, or who have developmental or cognitive impairment – ​​and his latest discovery is one of these people. Christine Hazel is 88 years old, suffers from progressive memory loss, and had never practiced art until six months ago. Since then, she has created more than 200 drawings, which have gone viral on Instagram, inspired followers, and will be featured in four scheduled exhibitions. She is also Higgs’ mother.

What started in May was an idea from Higgs’ sister Gaby, an architect who lives between London and York, where Hazel lives in a 17th-century terraced cottage. After discovering the colored pencils and drawing paper left behind by her now-adult children, Gabby suggested to her mother that she try copying some family photos to occupy her days. Hazel’s first drawings captured the faces of her children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren, and the family dog ​​Kizzy. Since then I have produced new drawings every day. “A mom can spend 10 minutes or two hours on each photo,” says Gabe. Absorbed by this activity, Hazel began sending phone messages to her brother.

Since 2004, Yorkshire-born Higgs has lived with his wife, American artist Anne Collier, in New York, where he works as director and chief curator of White Columns, the city’s oldest alternative art space. He was fascinated to discover that drawing had sparked something in his mother.

“It struck me that these were important drawings for an elderly person who had never drawn before. I would be fascinated by anyone who started making art in their 80s,” he says of his decision to share them on social media, as we sit at the kitchen table where Hazel makes her drawings. The fact that the artist is his mother—who no longer recognizes her family members but is engrossed in the process of painting their portraits—makes it all the more important to him.

Because of Hazel’s condition, what happens during this process is unknown, but Higgs notices a certain progress. “I quickly acquired a distinctive style and independent view of the world by translating photographs into drawings.” When taking her portraits, she chooses what to leave out and what to exaggerate. “I shot a video this week of my mother drawing my nephews and niece when they were little, and she mentions how perfect they look in the picture,” says Higgs. “She says her job is to ‘spoil’ that perfection, which she does by disrupting it in her drawing. She also described her drawing of a cat that looks ‘like a nightmare.’ It’s about giving her subjects a different face.”

For him, this justifies the idea that we are all inherently creative: “Allow someone the time, encouragement, and resources to be creative, and they will be more likely to happen.”

There has been a surge of interest among Higgs’ 65.3k Instagram followers, who react with wonder to his weekly posts of new drawings. They have won praise from Tracey Emin (“Something very good is happening here, and it shows it’s not too late”), Pulitzer Prize-winning art critic Gerry Saltz, and Tate Britain director Alex Farquharson, and have inspired collaborations with UK gallerists.

Florencia Clifford and her partner Hugo Hildyard, who own and run Partisan, a restaurant and exhibition space for emerging arts in York, will be showcasing Hazel’s first selection, which depicts 24 subjects from across Yorkshire, under the title Different Faces. “I was amazed when I saw those early posts,” Clifford says. “I knew immediately that I wanted to exhibit the drawings if I could. Christine’s art is magical and moving – freedom of expression without self-consciousness.”

Next July, Voltaire’s studio in London will display another set of drawings. “There is such care and interest in the process of making lines and shapes,” says its director, Joe Scotland. “The fact that Christine started making art at the age of 88 falls within our interests – creativity can emerge at any age and we were very impressed with White Columns in terms of expanding our support platform.”

At The Blacksmith’s Shop, an outdoor art gallery in East Yorkshire, owner and curator Mark Ipson will include Hazel’s art in its summer show in August 2026. “It meets our criteria perfectly,” he says. “It is the finest example of outdoor art I have seen in Yorkshire, made with real purity and without any commercial motive.” Hazel’s drawings – whose latest subjects include musicians and actors – will then cross the Atlantic to hang in the white columns.

“It gets more interesting,” Higgs says. “My mother has become more confident, more confident in the way she edits a photo and turns it into a drawing. It’s amazing that someone’s ability to visualize things can accelerate so quickly, while things in other aspects of their life slow down.”