Barbara Blackman

Barbara Blackman, née Patterson, was born in Brisbane, Australia with a twin sister who died 16 days later. Three years later, her father died and her mother, Gertrude Olson Patterson, supported them by working as an accountant. Barbara attended Brisbane State High School, where she developed a lifelong love of music and an interest in writing. She was diagnosed with optic atrophy at age 22 and her vision deteriorated until she was completely blind. She became an artist's model and was in high demand by leading modernist artists such as Clifton Pugh, Fred Williams, and Charles Blackman. In 1952, she married Charles Blackman, with whom she had three children and lived in Melbourne. The couple then became part of a wave of expatriate Australian painters, writers, and actors who lived in London in the early 1960s. They returned to Australia in 1966, and divorced after nearly 30 years of marriage in 1978. She later married Marcel Veldhoven and moved with him to a spiritual retreat on the south coast of New South Wales; after that marriage ended, she moved to Canberra. She helped set up Radio for the Print Handicapped, and was a major contributor to the National Library of Australia’s oral history program. For that project, she traveled around the country interviewing prominent artists and thinkers. Barbara also has published a number of different types of works. She wrote the libretto for Peter Sculthorpe's opera Eliza Surviva (never completed) and a humorous book of poems. She has also written autobiographical works, including Certain Chairs (1998); Glass after Glass: Autobiographical Reflections (1997); Portrait of a Friendship: The Letters of Barbara Blackman and Judith Wright (2007); All My Januaries: Pleasures of Life and Other Essays (2016); and Barbara and Charles Blackman Talk About Food. In 2012, she was appointed Officer of the Order of Australia (AO) for distinguished service to the arts and to the community, as a supporter of artistic performance, through philanthropic contributions, and as an advocate for people who are blind and partially sighted. She was the subject of the 2016 documentary film Seeing from Within: The Life of Barbara Blackman, made by John Swindells.