As someone who likes to contemplate things, it’s always fascinated me how intertwined Literature and Art truly are.

Artists will paint the same landscapes poets lament, and poets will draw inspiration from artists’ work, such as Keats’ “Ode on a Grecian Urn.” While studying these disciplines in undergraduate, the continuous connections between the two led me to pursue this series. Inspired by William Blake’s “Songs of Innocence and Experience,” which combines printmaking and watercolors to illustrate Blake’s own poems, this series conducts a close reading of some of my favorite poems and draws specific imagery from the works to pull new and unique meanings. While not all the poets are true “Romantics,” they all function in the spirit of Romanticism, which fostered my initial interest in poetry. The works are done with oil paint, acrylic paint, and various printmaking techniques, each medium tailored to the specific emotions evoked within the poem.