Why William Blake Was the Original Independent Creator

Long before the internet, William Blake built his own creative world without waiting for anyone’s permission.

I first discovered William Blake through Jim Morrison because that’s how The Doors got their name. Morrison borrowed it from Aldous Huxley’s The Doors of Perception, which itself took its title from one of Blake’s most famous lines in The Marriage of Heaven and Hell: “If the doors of perception were cleansed, everything would appear to man as it is, infinite.”

Like many rock fans, I followed the trail back to Blake. For years I tried to get into his work, but I always found myself admiring him more than actually enjoying reading him. I respected his influence, yet his poetry never completely clicked with me.

Everything changed after watching Evan Puschak’s excellent YouTube essay, The Art World Couldn’t Understand William Blake. The video isn’t really about Blake’s poetry. It’s about what happens when an artist refuses to fit neatly into the categories that critics, institutions, and the marketplace expect. Blake wasn’t simply a poet or a painter. He was a creator who combined writing, illustration, engraving, printing, and design into a single artistic vision. Much of the art establishment didn’t know what to make of him.

During his lifetime, Blake was largely overlooked. He died in relative poverty and was often dismissed as an eccentric, if not a lunatic. What many people think are his paintings are actually pages from his illuminated books. Blake wrote the text, created the artwork, etched the copper plates, printed every page, and hand-colored them himself using the innovative relief-etching process he developed. Today we’d probably call him a multimedia artist. In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, however, there wasn’t even a category for someone like him.

The Royal Academy valued specialization and artistic hierarchy. Blake rejected both by fusing words and images into a single work of art. His illuminated books sold only in very small numbers during his lifetime because they didn’t fit the artistic or commercial expectations of the day. Looking back, it’s easy to see how institutional attitudes and rigid artistic hierarchies worked against someone like Blake.

What’s remarkable is that Blake didn’t just create his own work. He controlled nearly every step of the process. He believed artists should be able to produce and publish their own creations without relying on traditional publishers or printers. More than two centuries later, that idea feels surprisingly modern.

His reputation changed dramatically during the 1960s. The counterculture embraced altered consciousness, mysticism, Eastern philosophy, and challenging authority, making Blake seem less like a madman and more like a visionary. Beat poet Allen Ginsberg famously described experiencing a vision in which he heard Blake reciting his poetry, while Huxley’s book inspired Jim Morrison to name The Doors. Blake’s criticism of rigid social institutions and his belief in personal freedom also resonated with a generation questioning convention.

His influence extends well beyond literature. John Lennon drew on Blake’s imagery, while artists including U2, Bruce Dickinson, Jah Wobble, M. Ward, and Ulver have adapted or been inspired by his work. Scholars frequently note that, after William Shakespeare, Blake is among the English-language poets most frequently set to music.

What fascinates me most is why Blake still matters. In the 1960s, he became a symbol of rebellion and psychedelia. Today, his appeal feels very different. We live in a world where creators write, illustrate, edit videos, publish books, design websites, record podcasts, and build audiences without waiting for permission. Blake was doing much the same thing more than two centuries ago.

He wasn’t chasing trends or trying to satisfy gatekeepers. He built a complete creative world on his own terms, even though almost nobody appreciated it during his lifetime. Independent creators understand that struggle. They know what it’s like to produce work that doesn’t fit neatly into an algorithm, a marketing category, or an industry label.

Blake wasn’t overlooked because he lacked talent. He was overlooked because his work refused to fit the categories of his day. History eventually caught up with him, and that’s a lesson every creator can appreciate. Sometimes the artists who seem out of place aren’t behind their time. They’re simply ahead of it.

Tony M.

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