Maia Norman
Headline:
Home is where Damien Hirst is
Synopsis:
Maia Norman survived the worst excesses of 1990s Brit art.
Well, I definitely wouldn’t mind being Maia Norman. Down a long, manicured drive in Devon, the pint-sized girlfriend of Damien Hirst lives in lo-fi bucolic splendour, along with their three boys, Connor, 13, Cassius, 8, and Cyrus, 3, an assortment of plump stray cats, three mucky dogs, a bunch of chickens, ponies and 22 — yes, 22 — surfboards. “For different conditions,” titters the sinewy 46-year-old. Er, how many different conditions are there? “Only about four!”
It’s 11am, but there’s already a small disco going on in the kitchen. The Tom Tom Club is blasting out from behind a Giacometti as Norman speaks simultaneously to the housekeeper about lunch — a roast is being whipped up — and two gardeners about the enormous vegetable patch behind the house. Halfway up the hill, Hirst, covered in paint and soot, is grimly toiling away (and remains away until it’s all over). Cyrus, a blond Hirst Mini-Me, punctuates the proceedings with a word that sounds like “f***!”. Norman remains serene. “We’ve got a nanny,” she says, “and a housekeeper, and then we’ve got a woodworker, a general manager and a gardener. And then a kind of . . . a leaf-blower guy. Then we’ve got two tree men who manage the forest. I think that’s all. Oh, and a driver who does the school run, too. Delegation is just so cool, isn’t it?”
- Publish date:
- 2 November 2008
- Author:
- Camilla Long
- Source:
- Sunday Times
- Media:
