Audrey Blackman

Blackman was born in London and raised in Leatherhead in Surrey by her parents, Hilda, a sculptor and author, and Richard Seligman, a chemical engineer.{{cite book|author=Sara Gray|publisher=Dark River|year=2019|title= British Women Artists. A Biographical Dictionary of 1000 Women Artists in the British Decorative Arts |isbn=978-1-911121-63-3}} After attending Wimbledon High School in London, Blackman spent two years, from 1924, at a Kunstgewerbeschule in Graz in Austria before returning to England to study at Goldsmiths College School of Art until 1930 and then at the University of Reading from 1931 until 1935.{{cite book|author=James Mackay|publisher=Antique Collectors' Club|year=1977|title=The Dictionary of Western Sculptors in Bronze }}{{cite book|author=Grant M. Waters|publisher=Eastbourne Fine Art|year=1975|title=Dictionary of British Artists Working 1900–1950}}{{cite book|author=David Buckman|publisher=Art Dictionaries Ltd|year=2006|title=Artists in Britain Since 1945 Vol 1, A to L |isbn=0-953260-95-X}}

Blackman initially worked in bronze to produce small group pieces and figures but after World War II began using terracotta and stoneware before concentrating on creating ceramic figures. In her ceramic work, Blackman worked rolled and slabbed pieces of clay into figurines and, in 1978, published a handbook, Rolled Pottery Figures, on her technique.{{cite web |url=https://weblearn.ox.ac.uk/access/content/group/stx/Website%20Documentation/Communications/Crossword/Crossword%202010.pdf |title=Audrey Blackman Ceramic figurines |year=2010|access-date=12 January 2020|work=Crossword, The St Cross College Magazine}} Later in her life she produced more abstract pieces, including paintings in both watercolour and gouache.

Blackman was a regular exhibitor with the Society of Women Artists, SWA, and at the Royal Academy in London. She showed some 48 works with the SWA between 1939 and 1971 and was elected an associate member in 1952 and a full member in 1961. Seventeen works by Blackman were included in Royal Academy exhibitions between 1938 and 1960. She also exhibited on at least one occasion at the Royal Glasgow Institute of the Fine Arts and was a member of the Art Workers Guild.{{cite web |author=University of Glasgow History of Art / HATII|url=https://sculpture.gla.ac.uk/view/person.php?id=msib6_1222166417 |title=Mrs Audrey Blackman |year=2011|access-date=12 January 2020|work=Mapping the Practice and Profession of Sculpture in Britain & Ireland 1851–1951}} Blackman was active in several bodies promoting arts and crafts including the International Academy of Ceramics, the Craft Advisory Committee and the Federation of British Craft Societies.

Living in Boar's Hill near Oxford, she married Geoffrey Blackman, the Sibthorpian professor of rural economy at Oxford University, and she was long associated with that University's St Cross College, where several examples of her sculpture and pottery are held and a room is named in her memory.

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Category:1907 births

Category:1990 deaths

Category:20th-century English women artists

Category:Alumni of Goldsmiths, University of London

Category:Alumni of the University of Reading

Category:Sculptors from London

Category:English ceramicists

Category:English women sculptors

Category:People educated at Wimbledon High School

Category:People from Leatherhead