Gratitude
I first started exploring collage purely out of curiosity for the medium. Papers, arranging, layering…it was all mesmerizing, and so different from my background as a painter. I was soon hooked and have been primarily a collage artist for the past several years now.
Little did I know that along the way I’d connect with what is a really beautiful collage community worldwide. I feel so grateful for the friendships that have developed through our shared love of this medium of expression! I’m traveling this week, so I’ve handed things over to my collage bestie Duane Toops. Duane and I have similar visual languages and similar visual appreciations, which makes it so fun to collaborate on various creative endeavors. Thank you, bestie, for your generosity.
I sent Duane three of my photos to work into his digital collages, along with three word prompts to choose from to write about: he chose the word Gratitude. Duane is not one to sit on an assignment for long (unlike me, ha- I tend to let things simmer for awhile!) and it wasn’t long at all before some beautiful collages appeared along with this powerful essay that makes me consider gratitude in a way I never had before. Enjoy…and if you don’t already follow Duane, go do it right after you read this! ;)
Gratitude
by Duane Toops
Most people see the glass as either half full or half empty. I tend to see it as something cracked and breaking, or as something altogether missing.
Some have the insight and serenity enough to see gratitude as an entry. The point at which to start from. A path that moves linearly. But some of us struggle to be thankful. Too consumed by the parts of ourselves that are still aching.
But what if gratitude is more circular? Something more hard-won and worn. Something with scuffs and bruises. What if it’s something you get as a result of something you’ve given? What if gratitude is something you have to fight for?
When you discover something or someone in the world that is “full of richness and goodness,” Nick Cave says, you will have to “stick up for it, protect it, run to its defense.”
And sometimes that full and rich person or thing that needs protecting and defending, needs protecting and defending from you.
Sometimes your own incapacity for appreciation, your own faults and failings, breaks what you found that was so beautiful.
You can run. You can hide. You can cower. You can be consumed by shame. Or you can roll up your sleeves, dig in your heels, grit your teeth and fight with everything you have to fight with for a chance at a second chance even when you know you don’t deserve a thing.
Sometimes, suddenly and without warning, against all rationality, you’re given grace and forgiveness. You’re handed a glass spilling over with redemption. And what “pours into you,” Nick Cave says, is gratitude.
May you always have the capacity to fight for something beautiful even when you’re undeserving.
May you never mistake your own faults as a reason to stop reaching.
May you always be open enough to receive the grace you’re given and let gratitude pour into you.
Thank you everyone for being here…I appreciate you!
xoxo,
Jill
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I simply adore the “Juane” collaboration. Pure gold. And @Duane - I think what I love about this is the honesty that gratitude doesn’t just appear like some kind of genie out of a bottle we’ve rubbed in the right way. It is a choice…and often a hard one. But there is a reason it’s referred to as the ‘practice of gratitude.’ It really is about trying to find ways to make that choice over and over again.
Duane, really love how you reinterpreted Jill's beautiful photographs. After I saw each collage, I had to go back to revisit the original photo. So good!