All of Walt Whitman’s poems are included in a collection of books titled ‘Leaves of Grass.’ In that poem, I focused on the poem ‘Song of Myself.’ This poem is extremely long. So, I decided to focus on a powerful theme that Whitman emphasize several times throughout the poem. Whitman insists that human, soul, nature, democracy is connected and they have a role in an endless cycle. That is why he emphasizes equality in this poem. It does not matter if a person in poor or rich, man or woman, a master or slave. He emphasizes that humanity is free, equal and worthy. And, everything in this world has a clear purpose.

I believe that the reasons behind writing this were to tell connection of souls. He believes divine energy flows through all humans. So I would like to express this idea in my visual representation. I will connect a symbol of the divinity of human life and every-day parts of life. In order to visually express this idea, I will create a picture. The picture will be in color to describe vividly and will be a composite of the symbolic background with a human life.

Human life can be nature, education, and relationships. Whitman divines nature. The nature he considers is equality, including grass, trees, worms, and beasts as well as humans, who are neither superior nor inferior. He said in “Song of Myself’, the grass is the very essence of human beings that no one can understand.  Based on these things, it will be done with pictures and pictures of magazines.

For the symbol of divinity, I’d like to use black canvas and paint planets, moons, and stars. In ‘Song of myself,’ Whitman tells the voice of a powerful self. By saying that he is the universe, he sees the individual as a spiritual being, not a real being who dies temporarily. From that perspective, he sees the man as the spirit of the eternal universe and the unified mystical being. And when I read this poem, I live vividly as I see the wide plains unfolding, receiving the moonlight in the darkness. The scene of the night seems to symbolize nature where all things are fused together, and it seems like looking at the mysterious stage with eyes. It can be seen as a divine and universal being. I have attached pictures that contain aspects similar to what I am going for with this visual representation of the poem.

Visually representing the human and divine, I should be taking elements from both places and making them one, in a same place. For my Artist’s statement, I plan on writing about a lot of things such as purpose and meaning of Whitman’s poem. And I’ll discuss divinity of human life and emphasis on Whitman’s view of this poem.

‘Song of Myself,’ is one of Walt Whitman’s most famous poems in “Leaves of Grass.” It helped readers understand the self as an individual and another human being. After I read this poem, I thought of myself and realized that how great and important an individual was.