7 people I would like to meet

A perennial blogging favourite that I have been prompted to think about by Arlee. I have chosen real people and to make life simpler they are all dead. I think it would be good to imagine them together round  table chewing the fat though when you read my selection you will see there might be some linguistic challenges!

William Morris

William Morris

William Morris was a nineteenth century English textile designer, writer and socialist associated with the Pre Raphaelites and he lived his life with such passion and with a vision of beauty and harmony. My house, like many, is full of his designs 120 years after his death.

Mary Wollstonecraft

Mary Wollstonecraft

Mary Wollstonecraft, a writer and philospher from the eighteenth century  is considered to be a founder of the feminism. Not sure how she would feel about how women have fared in the ensuing centuries.

Sophocles
Sophocles was the most famous playwright of his day ( 496-406 BC) and a rare long lived member of this list. He is best known for one of his Theban plays and his story about  Oedipus. He would be speaking in ancient Greek but let's imagine there is a translating device involved here!

Sophocles

Marie Curie

Marie Curie

As a nineteenth century Polish scientist Marie Curie was the first woman to win a Nobel Prize for her pioneering work  in the field of radiation. She went on to win another Nobel Prize in a different science and only one other person has ever achieved this. A driven woman with grit and determination for a whole lifetime.

 Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo
Diego Rivera was a Mexican painter who became famous for his murals which portrayed the lives of working people. Wish I had known about him when I visited San Francisco 20 years ago where his some of his murals are now in a gallery. His political views and their inclusion in his art made his career a checkered one. If he came to a meeting it would be good to have Frida Kalho, his most famous wife along too [ he had others as he was somewhat of a womaniser]. Frida, also Mexican who was most known for her self portraits. A tortured woman, she was disabled first by Polio and then by a traffic accident. Their relationship was tempestuous and any event would be interesting with the two of them there.

Frida Kahlo

Diego Rivera

George Orwell

George Orwell 

Born at the turn of the century Eric Blair, using his pen name George Orwell is an inspiration because of his biting satire and dystopian novels like 1984. He lived a short but never dull life and he unwittingly left us several words that have entered our vocabulary especially "Big Brother," "Room 101," and  "thought police,"

Kathe Kollwitz

Kathe Kollwitz
I know this one is number eight but I sneaked Frida in under Rivera's cape. Kathe Kollwitz was another imaginative artist with an eye for the common man the lives of whom she depicted in sometimes harrowing misery and without the sentimental approach many of her fellow artists were adopting.  Another person ahead of her time with a feeling for her fellow man. I would like to show her one of my sculptures inspired by one of her charcoal drawings.