QAG-2015-21

LURE of THE SUN : Charles Blackman in Queensland LURE of THE SUN: Charles Blackman in Queensland page 15. page 14. In February 1948, Blackman visited the Moreton Galleries in Brisbane, and saw an exhibition of works by Sidney Nolan, inspired by Nolan’s time on Fraser Island. Deeply impressed, Blackman later told curator Laurie Thomas: ‘What I liked about them was that they were dark, mysterious, almost surreal’. 5 ‘Trapping the inner feeling in the paint’ was how he later described these and Nolan’s Queensland outback works. 6 Nolan’s Moreton Galleries exhibition revealed to Blackman the power of a painting to articulate a clear and particular vision. Through his friendship with Barrett Reid, Blackman was later introduced to the art patrons John and Sunday Reed in Melbourne, and through them, he saw Nolan’s early St Kilda works. 7 In 1952, before Blackman left Melbourne for Brisbane, Sunday Reed presented him with a leather plumber’s bag filled with brushes and small tins of Dulux enamel paint. That same year, once in Brisbane, Blackman painted Barnes Auto, Brisbane and City lights . The bright, glossy surface of City lights suggests it may have been painted with house paints, possibly those given to him by Sunday Reed. This painting — effectively linking the work of avant-garde artists and writers of 1940s and 1950s Brisbane with their southern counterparts — is an integral part of the story of Australian art in the years immediately following World War Two. Giant tortoise, Brisbane Botanical Gardens 1948 Ink / 37 x 29.5cm / Gift of Mrs Pamela Crawford (née Seeman), 1988 / Collection: The University of Queensland / Photograph: Carl Warner Sketch of Don Savage 1948 Pen and ink / 36 x 48.7cm / Gift of Mrs Pamela Crawford (née Seeman), 1988 / Collection: The University of Queensland / Photograph: Carl Warner Untitled (schoolgirl craving for an apple) c.1951–53 Charcoal and crayon frottage on thin cream wove paper / 52.7 x 61cm / Gift of the Queensland Art Gallery Society 1985 / Collection: Queensland Art Gallery LAURENCE HOPE Man’s head c.1945–52 Watercolour / 26 x 22.5cm (sight) / Gift of Geoffrey and Lawrence Hirst in memory of their parents Dr Paul Hirst and Mrs Fritzi Hirst through the Queensland Art Gallery Foundation 2009. Donated through the Australian Government’s Cultural Gifts Program / Collection: Queensland Art Gallery Blackman’s early painting owes much to Nolan, whose approach to ‘seeing’ enabled Blackman to construct his own unique process of visual exploration and understanding. Many years later, however, Blackman would draw another conclusion: ‘People ask me if I was influenced by Nolan. But he is a painter of landscape and of myth. I am a painter of internal things’. 8 Blackman’s later reticence in acknowledging Nolan’s part in his artistic development had its counterpoint in his recognition of the influence of his good friend, the Brisbane-based artist Laurence Hope: His pictures impressed me, they were real live art. Up till then I had been doing largely abstract work. He taught me that you can actually draw your own images, you don’t have to use other people’s images. An image is something that you can make yourself . . . My own work became more personal. 9 As a painter of ‘internal things’, Hope’s expressive and often darkly isolated figures, as seen in Man’s head c.1945–52 and Tired girl 1950, were important influences on Blackman’s understanding of human character and helped him develop his own powerful imagery. (Self-portrait in front of a boarding house, Spring Hill) 1951 is an early example of Blackman’s maturing technique. It is more assured than earlier works and shows his strong personal and artistic connections to Brisbane.