I was introduced to the work of William Blake by Sir Geoffrey Keynes, scholar and respected authority on the artist’s work. In his library at Lammas House, Geoffrey had a plaster cast of William Blake’s life mask that was taken in 1823. I was struck by Blake’s huge bulging eyes on the plaster cast.
William Blake was the first sculpture I made of writers, others include Jane Austen and John Donne, all of whose works Geoffrey had introduced me to. I was enamoured of the monumental head of Hadrian, the Roman Emperor, in the British Museum and it inspired me to create my head of William Blake. The square inscription on the neck of the sculpture says ‘Blake Visionary Imagination’.