A talk and display to accompany a new Blake-inspired artist’s book and series of prints, Ah! Sunflower!
The Swedenborg Society and the Blake Society present the launch of a new artist’s book and print series, with accompanying talk and display.

The event was held at Swedenborg Hall and was live-streamed via Zoom. 

Celebrating the launch of her new Blake-inspired artist’s book and series of prints, Ah! Sunflower!, this evening will see artist and printmaker Linda Landers in conversation with leading independent Blake scholar Keri Davies.

Linda has long had a close connection with the work of William Blake, drawing inspiration from his poetry to develop her own series of engravings, prints and fine press books. Linda will introduce the audience to her work, accompanied by a slideshow of imagery as well as physical displays of her artworks and books in the very apt surroundings of Swedenborg House’s Grade II-listed neoclassical Hall and Wynter Room. In conversation with Blake scholar and historian, Keri Davies, Linda will look at how Blake has influenced her practice, in particular the Songs of Innocence and Experience—are these songs merely nursery rhymes or a unique tool to inform, to teach or to elevate consciousness?

There will also be a short performance written by Linda, with actor Simon Brandon as William Blake and Linda Landers as Catherine.

Linda Landers grew up in Hertfordshire and studied at Central St Martins School of Art in London where she gained a BA (Hons) in Fine Art Painting. Prior to this she completed a one-year design induction and one-year Art Foundation course at Watford College of Art. Subsequently, Linda entered into an extensive study of printmaking techniques and also completed a six-month printmaking residency, after which she began to focus on wood engraving and producing limited edition books whilst also showing her paintings, linocuts and etchings. She received a prize for excellence in Printmaking at the Mall Galleries in London, where she has given workshops. Her books are held in public and private collections. Her painting and printmaking have been exhibited at the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition on many occasions, most recently 2020-21. In 2017 Linda obtained an MA from Kingston University. She is a fellow of the Royal Society of Painter-Printmakers, at Bankside Gallery. Linda’s article on Catherine Blake has recently appeared in volume 2 of Undefined Boundary: The Journal of Psychick Albion published by Temporal Boundary Press. More information about her work can be found at lindalanders.art/home.

Keri Davies, B.Sc., A.R.C.S., Ph.D., is Vice-President of the Blake Society and an Honorary Visiting Fellow of Nottingham Trent University. An independent scholar, he has written much on William Blake’s parents (particularly his mother’s links to the Moravian Church), and on the social and intellectual milieu of early Blake collectors, and other friends and acquaintances of the painter-poet. Keri’s work has been published in important anthologies such as Blake, Gender and Culture, ed. Tristanne Connolly & Helen Bruder (London: Pickering & Chatto, 2012); Re-envisioning Blake, ed. Mark Crosby, Troy Patenaude and Angus Whitehead (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012) and William Blake in Twentieth-Century Art, Music and Culture, ed. Steve Clark, Tristanne Connolly and Jason Whittaker (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012). The Swedenborg Society has published Keri Davies’s work in Philosophy, Literature, Mysticism: an anthology of essays on the thought and influence of Emanuel Swedenborg, ed. Stephen McNeilly (2013) and Keri reviewed The Arms of Morpheus: Essays on Swedenborg and Mysticism, ed. Stephen McNeilly (2007) for the British Journal of Eighteenth Century Studies in 2009.