CHARLES BLACKMAN

After their first year in Melbourne, Charles and Barbara Blackman returned north again in the winter of 1952, staying in and around Brisbane at Stradbroke Island, at Judith Wright's house at Mount Tamborine and at Barabara's mother's in Kelvin Grove. From the window of her flat Blackman painted a number of views - 'suburban illuminations in collage style' - such as Bird before the City and Boy with a Bird.¹

In the present work, two busts are silhouetted in front of a yellow-lit 'Queenslander', one of Brisbane's 'slanting, slatting, latticed timber houses.'² Contained within perspective lines, this box-theatre floats in front of a background of quickly-brushed, pink-brown stripes: weatherboards and fenceposts, shutters and steps.

The painting is pivotal. The broad, rapid brushwork and the spatial disjunction of the central motif clearly signal Blackman's early debt to Sidney Nolan, while other aspects of the work anticipate subsequent developments: the strong pattern of isosceles triangles is repeated in the sawtooth lines of terrace rooftops and straw hats in the Schoolgirl series, the ominous shadow busts anticipate the looking in/looking away figures in the 1960 Suites, while the light-box points forward to the window and shadow images of the later 1960s.

1. Felicity St John Moore, Schoolgirls and Angels: A Retrospective Exhibition of Paintings and Drawings, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, p. 17
2. Thomas Shapcott, The Art of Charles Blackman, Andre Deutsch, London