Blackman, Charles

Charles Blackman was born in Sydney on 12 August 1928. He left school  at thirteen and worked with the Sydney Sun, while attending night classes in drawing and design at the East Sydney Technical College from 1942-5 under Hayward Veal.

In 1946-8 he met Lois Hunter, a poet from New Zealand and part of the Wellington avant-garde, who introduced him to the work of many writers and artists, including Arthur Rimbaud and T.S. Eliot.

Barbara Patterson, another poet, became Blackman’s wife in 1951.

She had impaired sight and her reliance on Blackman’s eyesight sharpened his observation. His empathy with her predicament led him to focus on the face, depicting figures with huge, dark, expressive eyes.

Blackman moved to Melbourne in 1950 and became a member of the Antipodeans in 1959.

He created haunting images of grave women and girls, detached from their surroundings, absorbed in daydreams or games and oblivious to reality.

He lived and worked in Sydney until his death in 2018