QAG-2015-21

LURE of THE SUN : Charles Blackman in Queensland page 16. Barbara and Brisbane Our glistening chrysalis grew wings in that house of many rooms, retracting at night into sleep like a snail into its shell, so that I, listening to the other breathings through airy doorways, felt we were a family whole. 10 After returning to Brisbane in 1949, Blackman corresponded with Barbara who was studying in Sydney. They met again in Sydney in 1950, soon after Barbara had given up her postgraduate study due to rapidly deteriorating eyesight. They were drawn to Melbourne where they married on 18 June 1951. One of the attractions for their move was to further connections with Sidney Nolan and Albert Tucker, however, by that time, both artists had relocated to Europe. The couple’s union ensured an ongoing connection to Brisbane and, in 1952, Charles and Barbara travelled north for the winter to make the first of several annual visits to Barbara’s mother. Melbourne and Brisbane exerted parallel influences on Blackman’s work in the following years, firstly in the ‘Schoolgirl’ series. These dark and sometimes menacing images were influenced by the shocking murder of a schoolgirl in Melbourne, as well as the unsolved Brisbane murder in 1952 of Betty Shanks, a university friend of Barbara Blackman. 11 These lonely and vulnerable figures may also reflect something of Blackman’s own disrupted childhood. Significantly, they represent the beginning of a unique personal vision in the artist’s oeuvre. In 1956, Barbara brought home a talking book machine and one of the first books the Blackmans ‘read’ was Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland . This was Charles Blackman’s first encounter with the story and, importantly, it was an encounter without the influence of illustrations to colour his imagination. 12 Curator Felicity St John Moore notes that, for Blackman, the ‘story of Alice moving through irrational situations strikes a chord with Barbara’s personality and solitariness’. 13 With Barbara/Alice as his muse, Blackman began to work on a new series of works. The Blue Alice (detail) 1956–57 Tempera, oil and household enamel on composition board / 122 x 122cm / Purchased 2000. The Queensland Government’s special Centenary Fund / Collection: Queensland Art Gallery