Ericka Rae Wills
I am currently an English Studies MA student at Illinois State, with a concentration in literature and linguistics. As an undergraduate, I studied at many universities, Oxford U, Columbia U - NYC, and Illinois Wesleyan U. It was as a senior at Illinois Wesleyan that I first read The Divine Comedy in its entirety. I was so struck by the whirlwind of lovers in Canto V of Inferno that I felt it would take more than words for me to express the emotion - it needed vivid color and enveloping darkness, which only my paints could adequately provide. Recently, I discovered that William Blake created a visual representation of this striking scene, and while his work provides a different interpretation of the text, it carries the same sense of, as Dante writes of the lovers, "how much desiring brought these two down into this agony" (V:113-114).
Genre: Visual Art
Title: Cantos V: Lovers' Tempest
My work is oil and acrylic on canvas, approx. 12x18 in.