Queensland would prove lifechanging for Sydney-born painter Charles Blackman, connecting him with likeminded peers with whom he forged enduring friendships. Blackman left school at just thirteen, accepting a cadetship with Sydney’s Sun newspaper and subsequently enrolling in evening classes at East Sydney Technical College.

Resigning from the newspaper in 1948, Blackman hitchhiked to Brisbane, where he met the artists of the Miya Studio – a breakaway group of younger painters, including Laurence Hope and Laurence Collinson, who railed against the conservatism of Brisbane’s art scene. The affiliated Barjai writers, including Collinson and poets Barrett Reid and Barbara Patterson, who became Blackman’s wife and muse, were formative influences. Significantly, Blackman saw Sidney Nolan’s paintings of shipwreck survivor Eliza Fraser at Brisbane’s Moreton Galleries in 1948 and was inspired by Nolan’s naive, expressionist style.

In 1951, Blackman and Patterson moved to Melbourne and, following their marriage, made trips to Brisbane to visit Barbara’s mother, and to see poet Judith Wright and her husband Jack McKinney on Tamborine Mountain. Dating from this period, (Self-portrait in front of a boarding house, Spring Hill) reveals Blackman’s appreciation for Brisbane’s distinctive architecture.