Vedic Horoscope for Blackman, Barbara

Australian artists' model and muse, writer, essayist, librettist, letter writer and patron of the Arts. Having suffered with poor eyesight throughout her youth, she was diagnosed in 1950 with optic atrophy. Her vision declined rapidly until she became completely blind. By 1952 she had married the artist Charles Blackman, and after moving from Brisbane to Melbourne, was involved in the modernist art movement which emerged there. She co-founded the Contemporary Arts Society in Melbourne - which promoted the work of artists like Arthur Boyd and Sidney Nolan. After 27 years of marriage, the Blackmans divorced in 1978, largely because of his alcoholism. They had three children: Auguste, Christabel and Barnaby. In later life, Barbara married Frenchman Marcel Veldhoven. They spent twelve years together, living in Indooroopilly, a suburb of Brisbane. In 2004, Blackman pledged $1 million to music in Australia.Sy Scholfield quotes "Glass after Glass: Autobiographical Reflections" by Barbara Blackman (Viking, 1997), pp. 16-20, in which she writes of going blind in 1950 and states "Astrologers see it there in the birth map: Taurus rising at 28 degrees. The soul had found the creature unprepared for blindness - a gift whose understanding costs *not less than everything*" (p. 17). The date is stated in various biographical resources and can be calculated from her transcription of a Brisbane cemetery notice stating the burial of her deceased second born twin sister who "died 7 January 1929, aged 16 days" (p. 20).