EPPH - Every Painter Paints Himself

Nature and Us

Great artists may follow dogma out of social etiquette or necessity but they think freely, leading them somewhat paradoxically to a similar conclusion.¹ They know in unison, as do poets and other sensitive types, that our minds trick us into thinking that we are only self-contained, independent entities with an ego and that we are different from everyone else and every other species. They see past that, the normal assumptions of daily life, to recognize our unity with nature. What, though, is that we have in common with nature? Existence.

The Meaning of Existence

Everything except language
knows the meaning of existence.
Trees, planets, rivers, time
know nothing else. They express it
moment by moment as the universe.
Even this fool of a body
lives it in part, and would
have full dignity within it
but for the ignorant freedom
of my talking mind.

from Poems the Size of Photographs

Les Murray
(1938)
Australian poet 

 

1. The idea that great artists across the centuries have similar ideas is, of course, highly controversial but the evidence presented on this site suggests that it is so.