Charles Blackman was born in the Sydney harborside suburb of Harbord, the third child of Charles Cervic Blackman, a mechanical engineer, and his wife Marguerite Brown, who always preferred fantasy to reality. His father abandoned the family when the boy was four, leading his mother to work long hours at a waitress at Circular Quay – and when she could not cope the children were placed in Dalwood Homes. In primary school he was (briefly)taught by Rah Fizelle.
He left school at 13, after an extended bout mumps which confined him to bed. His mother gave him paints to keep him occupied. In 1942 he was employed by the Sydney Sun, first as a copy boy and later as an art cadet. In about 1947 he enrolled in painting classes under Hayward Veal at the Meldrum School of Art, but did not find this to his taste. However he did enjoy the drawing classes at SORA (Studio of Realist Art)and the Sketch Club in Haymarket.
The New Zealand poet, Lois Hunter, introduced him to modern art and he began to read twentieth century European literature. Her edition of Lautréamont’s Les Chants de Maldoror introduced him to the work of Odilon Redon.
In 1948 he followed Hunter to Brisbane where he met other modernist artists and poets, including his future wife, Barbara Patterson. In 1951 Blackman and Patterson moved to Melbourne where they married, spending the following years. In 1952 Blackman came to the attention of the art patrons John and Sunday Reed, with whom he later quarrelled, as well as the art critic Alan McCulloch.
Accounts of the unsolved murder of Barbara’s childhood friend, Betty Shanks, inspired his first series of schoolgirl paintings. Barbara was slowly going blind, and so he read to her children’s and fantasy literature, which came in turn to influence his own art, especially Alice in Wonderland. In 1959, encouraged by Bernard Smith, he joined with fellow artists to assert the value of the figurative image in the Antipodeans exhibition, and designed the exhibition poster.
- Writers:
- Staff Writer
- Date written:
- 1996
- Last updated:
- 2018
