EPPH - Every Painter Paints Himself

Emerson on Mind

When I started out I soon realized that every true work of art fulfilled the Renaissance saying that titles this site. EPPH, in short. Now, in more recent years, I have come to recognize that every artwork, like every church and temple from the neolithic caves of Europe to the columns of Luxor, to the frescoes of the Sistine Chapel and beyond, is a depiction of the Universal Mind. I will expand on this shortly but, for now, read Ralph Waldo Emerson whose wisdom, articulated in words, is art itself.

"There is one mind common to all individual men. Every man is an inlet to the same and to all of the same. He that is once admitted to the right of reason is made a freeman of the whole estate. What Plato has thought he may think; what a saint has felt he may feel; what at any time has befallen any man he can understand. Who hath access to this universal mind is a party to all that is or can be done, for this is the only and sovereign agent."¹

1. Emerson, "The Universal in Man"