Painter, third daughter of an English doctor living in Australia. When she was six the family moved to England to be closer to her father who was serving in France in World War I. They returned to Australia in 1920 and Blair Barber attended classes with Henri van Raalte and Margaret Saunders. When the family moved to Melbourne she studied at the National Gallery School, which she found to be a little restricting, and moved instead to the more modern George Bell School.
Blair Barber was married in 1931 to Charles Bunning of the timber merchant company. She exhibited under her married name but considered she was not taken seriously in the milieu in which she mixed socially so in the 1950s changed to Blair Barber. She had also joined the socialist Art Workers Guild. They had three children one of whom is the author and artist Jenny Mills.
Blair Barber continued to explore her art studying in London at the Heatherley School under Iain McNab in the 1940s and spent more time at the National Gallery School. She exhibited with the Perth Society of Artists, the Contemporary Art Society, the Western Australian Women’s Society of Fine and Applied Arts and with the West Australian Society of Arts in 1949 (as Betty Bunning) and in 1956 (as Blair Barber).
In 1944 the reviewer “C. G.”, Charles Hamilton, described a work as, “graceful karri trunks in front of a sky which persists in coming forward”. She had a solo exhibition in Melbourne in 1949 and with Audrey Greenhaugh and Guy Grey-Smith. When the children were grown in the 1960s Blair Barber started the Cremorne Art Gallery in Cremorne Arcade near Bon March_. She had a solo exhibition here in 1976 as Blair Barber. Solo exhibitions were also held in 1995, 1996 and 2000 at Gomboc Gallery.
- Writers:
- Dr Dorothy Erickson
- Date written:
- 2010
- Last updated:
- 2011
