Thetis Blacker
English painter and singer noted for batik works.
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Ann Thetis Blacker (13 December 1927 – 18 December 2006) was an English painter and singer, noted for her richly coloured pictures, especially using the batik wax-resist fabric dyeing process. Born in Holmbury St Mary, Surrey, England, she was the daughter of psychiatrist Carlos Paton Blacker and granddaughter of Carlos Blacker, a friend of Oscar Wilde. Blacker originally intended to be a singer, studying with German mezzo-soprano Elena Gerhardt in London. She appeared in the chorus at Glyndebourne opera in the 1950s and sang the role of Mother Goose in Stravinsky's The Rake's Progress. When vocal issues cut short her singing career in the mid-1950s, she turned to painting, studying at the Chelsea School of Art under Brenda Moore, wife of artist Leonard Campbell Taylor.
Quick Facts
- Born
- 13 December 1927
- Birthplace
- Holmbury St Mary, Surrey, England
- Died
- 18 December 2006
- Place of death
- Bramley, Surrey, England
- Field
- Painting, batik
- Training
- Chelsea School of Art
- Patrons
- Henry Dyson
Facts from the source article.
Background
In 1970, Blacker became a Churchill Fellow and visited India, Indonesia, Iran, Malaysia, Singapore, and Thailand. She worked at the Batik Research Institute in Yogyakarta, Indonesia, then went on to visit Bali and Peru. These travels influenced her style of brightly coloured symbolic pictures using batik dyed fabric. A number of cathedrals and churches in the United Kingdom, the rest of Europe, and the United States commissioned her work, including a series of five major pieces based on mythical themes: Apocalypse (at St Andrew's House), Arbor Cosmica, A Bestiary of Mythical Creatures, The Creation (at Winchester Cathedral), and Search for the Simurgh.
In 1993 she provided illustrations for The Birds Who Flew Beyond Time by Anne Baring. Her commissions included a baptismal banner at St Machar's Cathedral, Aberdeen (1991); work at St George's Chapel, Windsor (1997, with an exhibition there in 2000); St Albans Abbey; three works in Grey College Chapel at the University of Durham (The Creation of Darkness and Light, Imago Aquarium, and Imago Lucis); a phoenix in the dining hall of Grey College, Durham (2000); and banners of St Cuthbert and St Oswald at Durham Cathedral (2001). Her work was exhibited at Glyndebourne in 2005. Her dealer was Henry Dyson, and she died in Bramley, Surrey in 2006.
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