WILLIAM BLAKE
...s interested in artists and writers influences and backgrounds. It is Blakes religious and social influences that I am particularly interested, and I would like to explore these, to gain some insight into what inspired his works. I am also aware that Blake was interested in, and worried by religion. Blake was neither a practicing Anglican or Catholic, and yet he was obviously a deeply spiritual man, and was clearly intrigued by the Bible because he illustrated the New Testament. I feel that Blake’s uncertainty, but equal fascination with religion is something that I have in common with the artist, and this is something that draws me to his work. William Blake, a man who knew that he had to “create a system or be enslav’d by another mans” has been described as many things since his death , at the age of seventy, in 1827. Without doubt Blake had a preoccupation with the ideas of good and evil, and a real compassion for the people he saw suffering on the streets of London. It was these preoccupations which caused him to compose the famous, illuminated texts ‘Songs of Innocence and of Experience’, although they are not to be thought of as one piece of artwork, although they are often published as one edition. The two books are a progression of Blake’s life, the ‘Songs of Innocence’ being...