“In the spring of 1953, Alan McCulloch invited Charles and Barbara to his picturesque home at Shoreham on the Mornington Peninsula.”  So writes Christabel Blackman in her recently released book on her parents, Charles & Barbara Blackman: A Decade of Art and Love.

As art critic for the Melbourne Herald from 1951, Mr McCulloch had given Charles Blackman his first review and remained a guiding force to Blackman and other artists who would similarly become some of Australia’s most famous. Many were regular visitors to the McCullochs’ home, Whistlewood.

Now heritage-listed, Whistlewood remains in the McCulloch family as home of the gallery Everywhen Art. This month, the gallery is holding an exhibition of Blackman’s drawings, prints and small sculptures from the Blackman Family Collections, launched by a book-signing and in conversation with Christabel and award-winning journalist Tracee Hutchison.

Six years ago, when the late writer, philanthropist and polymath Barbara Blackman AO turned 90, she and Christabel – an artist, fine art conservator and writer – sifted through Barbara’s vast collection of papers.  Among them was a fragile 70-year-old folder with dozens of letters between Charles and Barbara from the late 1940s to the early ‘50s.  “A small scruffy muscly painter from Sydney, with eyes bigger than himself; long eyelashes and a fawn-like grace” is how Barbara described her first impression of Charles to Christabel.

When apart in pursuit of their ambitious youthful dreams, the couple wrote regularly.  Threaded through the poetic, high-keyed expressions of love and longing, they related their daily lives. Due to their own proclivities and talents, the ‘everyday’ for the Blackmans was a life shared with a burgeoning number of fellow artists, writers, musicians, poets and actors similarly bent on forging lives in the arts in 1950s Melbourne.  Here was the extensive Boyd clan in their sprawling Murrumbeena home, Open Country: Sidney Nolan, Joy Hester, Albert Tucker and others at Sunday and John Reed’s Heide; John Perceval and John Brack in Camberwell; Mirka and Georges Mora in their Collins St apartment and Mirka’s Cafe in Exhibition St, and many more.

With an insider’s perspective, Christabel charts these and other art interactions of the 1950s as well as her parents’ artistic achievements, the motivations for her father’s most famous subjects of schoolgirls and Alice in Wonderland, and their family life. This included Barbara’s failing eyesight (she became blind at 22); Charles reading the ‘radical’ classics of Dostoevsky, Henry Miller and Rimbaud to her each evening; and their first home – a run-down coach house in Camberwell where they cleared rubble, whitewashed walls and tacked Charles’ works to the boards to keep out draughts.

Most of their friends were similarly impoverished yet full of creativity.  “Friendships were their wealth and long-term investment,” Christabel writes.  These friendships and much more are brought vividly and eloquently to life in her lavishly illustrated, revelatory book – on one hand a loving tribute to her famous parents; on the other an insightful record of a pivotal decade of Australian art.

Charles Blackman: decades of art + love is an exhibition of editioned prints, small sculptures and drawings from the Blackman Family Collections and runs from December 8-22.

Christabel Blackman and Tracee Hutchison will be in conversation, book signing and brunch at Whistlewood on Sunday, December 8, from 11am-noon.  The cost is $20 and bookings are essential on www.everywhenart.eventbrite.com.au or through the gallery.