Gratitude
The essence of all beautiful art, all great art, is gratitude.
– Friedrich Nietzsche
I don't think gratitude in this sense means being happy, I just think it means accepting things as they occur. It involves being in touch and aware of your emotions so you can draw from them. This is a big part of growing and evolving as an artiste.
Art is an expression of yourself and your reality. You have to be grateful for your experiences i.e. You have to accept your experience to be able to produce something from it or to change it. Yes, art comes from many different places like sadness and anger and death, but being able to produce work from those emotions involves accepting them and being aware and conscious of those emotions in the first place.
This made me think about how art comes from being grateful and accepting of the world you live in. From the music to the coffee to the sound of a child crying. Art exists in and around all of us. We just have to want to see it to actually see it.
So today, be grateful for you and for the things that you do and the things you feel. Be grateful for the things you have done and the things you will do. Be grateful for other people. Open your eyes to see the art that lives amongst us.