“William Blake, an English poet and artist (1757–1827), is renowned for his visionary, romantic, and often rebellious insights on imagination, spirituality, and human existence. “
Wiki
When I was a child, I was very creative and loved drawing but it was my older sister Leanne that had the greatest artistic gift so my mother encouraged her by buying her art magazines about the worlds famous artists from the Avalon news agency and I can’t remember how often they came out but mum slowly collected all of them for my sister. However, I read them too and read all the information and marvelled at the artworks. This is how I got my first education about art. Number seven was about William Blake. They were called the Great Artists.
“Blake’s invention made it possible to print both the text of his poems and the images that he created to illustrate them from the same copper plate, etched in relief (in contrast to conventional etching or engraving in intaglio), unassisted, using his own rolling-press.”
Famous quotes include:
“To see a World in a grain of sand, And a Heaven in a wild flower, Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand, And Eternity in an hour”.
William Blake
I like this quote by Blake and feel the idea of seeing the world in a grain of sand shows how immense the world is but it’s also microscopic compared to the solar system and universe and beyond.
“The imagination is not a state: it is the human existence itself”.
William Blake
I like this quote and that there is no separation between the imagination and human existence in my opinion.
“If the doors of perception were cleansed everything would appear to man as it is, infinite”.
William Blake
This quote by Blake about the doors of perception if cleansed then things would appear as infinite shows ideas about infinity long before scientists had come up with the idea of no boundaries to space and the concept of infinity.
“For everything that lives is holy, life delights.”
William Blake
This quote by Blake explains the divinity of all life.
“Joy and woe are woven fine, A clothing for the soul divine”.
I agree with Blake that joy and woe are intertwined and happiness and sadness are like a see saw going up and down in balance.
In conclusion Blake’s images and text and poetic text were conceptually and visually long before their time and seem to be precursors to such things as comic books where text and drawings worked together.
