So what do you do when you’ve failed. What do you do when what you did completely faceplants? In our art form, equine realism, in particular, it’s incredibly easy to fail. In fact, every piece you ever create in equine realism — no matter how great and accurate and perfect you think it is — is an utter and complete failure of the highest order. Why is that? Because no matter how good and highly skilled and savvy you are, you can never fully create a 100% accurate horse. Only Nature can do that, only DNA has that power. Now, yes, you can come awfully close, but still — no cigar. Never ever a cigar.
So how do we keep going forwards in our work to the extreme extent we need to go fully knowing that all that will come to naught? How do we keep showing up to do our job over and over and over again with failure after failure after failure? For our entire lives. Is it strength? Is it stubbornness? Is it determination? Is it discipline? Is it foolishness? All of the above? Probably so, in part. But even more than that, far more than that, it’s something else. It’s at the foundation, it’s the fountainhead, the wellspring, the ether that permeates every pore, right into our guts and bones. What is it?
It’s love.
And not just love of horses — that’s a given. I’m talking about the kind of love that keeps you going despite everything — all the setbacks, all the criticism, all the hardships and the oh-so many sacrifices, the fears, the longing, the isolation, the pain, the cuts and the blood, the anguish, the frustration, and the maddening possession that is arting. The love that sustains you as sure as fire sustains the sun.
This is the kind of love that’s critical for an artist to have, especially one in our demanding art form because it fortifies you against failure. Indeed, this love will determine if you continue or if you quit, if you excel or stall out, or if you’re confident or fearful. So let’s talk about this duality between love and failure in the hopes that, once pinpointed, you'll be better outfitted for your own creative adventures. So let's go!...
“Coming Home”
Elizabeth Gilbert talks about always “coming home,” of “finding your way home,” when you’ve been catapulted out of it by massive success or massive failure. That while society may discern one as positive and one as negative, she goes onto say that our subconscious mind cannot make that distinction — it simply understands the mean distance it’s been jettisoned from “home.” What is “home”? It’s that thing — that activity, family, place, or whatever — that you love more than you love yourself. Whatever it is, that’s your “home.” For her that home was writing, so when she met with insane success with her book, Eat, Pray, Love, and then massive failure with her follow-up book, rather than letting either scenario paralyze her or compel her to quit completely out of sheer intimidation — she "went home." She returned to the source of her greatest love — writing. So build your house on top of that and don’t budge, she advises. Your "home" is your nexus, your well of energy that will serve as your powerhouse to keep you fueled up, revving onward, plowing through it all, again and again and again through every failure and setback, every challenge and detour. Absolutely, this great love will always see you through and steer you back on course!
Likewise, your task then when you’re launched out of your "home" by success or failure is to find your way back. How do we do that? Well, we do that by simply showing up and getting back to work, as it's been done from the beginning by everyone having to get back on track, reveals Gilbert. Absolutely, as I always say: The truth is in the work. So when you find yourself in the failure wastelands again, find your way back home — somehow. Crawl and claw your way back if need be. But get back to work, in some way. It’s in the making of new work — regardless of whether it’s “good” or “bad” — where the magic is to be found that will carry you forwards through every single failure. Then simply lather, rinse, repeat with each new failure. Because the correct response to every failure is simple: Make more art. That's always — always — the right answer. Remember, every new piece is your comeback! And every new piece helps you find your way "home."
But you must find it in yourself to create again. Somehow excavate that great love out to rekindle its flame into the blazing firestorm it wants to be. In a sense then, it takes quite a bit of moxie to create art, doesn’t it? To just darn the torpedoes and full steam ahead? To just railroad your sense of disappointment, daunting, intimidation, and fear to say, “$&%# it — I’m going to make new art anyway! IT'S GO TIME!” Whenever an artist comes to this realization, it's a moment of great celebration for they've embraced that necessary gumption to just keep going despite it all. Really, they've embraced what they love to do so much, they just no longer care about the fall out. Glorious!
Learn to say $&%# It
So — yes — you must learn to say “$&%# it” often and enthusiastically when it comes to your arting. You’ve got to have a sort of reckless abandon, a rebellious, punk rock attitude when it comes to creating your art. Why? Because life is going to try and hold you back with your art, it’s going to try and pummel you down with it — actively, constantly, and brutally. It's going to try and make you small! Negative public reactions, rotten opinions, criticism and unsolicited critique, outcries, annoying speculation, lambasting, and all manner of backblow are waiting for you the moment you debut every single piece, forever. The world is a set of very sharp knives pointed right at you and you’re strapped onto a board at its mercy, knives thrown at you with each new piece you ever create. And you have to learn how to get back up, bloodied, beaten, stabbed, slashed, and gutted, again and again and again, each and every time, to get back to work and start the whole process all over again.
Indeed, you need tremendous courage to be an artist! An uncanny amount of courage, actually. Almost a foolish degree of courage. In this, your drive — your love — of creating art is more powerful than any of the backblow and so you brave those waters time and again out of sheer loving stubbornness. What a beautiful thing! What a scrappy, unruly, hardcore, wonderful thing! So make it a habit to say “$&%# it” time and again. As always, $&%# those torpedoes and full steam ahead!
Ignore The Noise
I’ve written about dealing with criticism of your art already quite a bit, so I’ll leave it at that. But suffice to say — ignore all the noise, ignore all that back blow. As Brené Brown wisely advises, “If you aren’t in the arena also getting your ass kicked, I’m not interested in your opinion.” And there it is. That quote is based on this one by Theodore Roosevelt, which comes to mind:
It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.
Bingo. Never forget who you are, or the potency of your love, or the power of what you’re doing when you create your art, and never take for granted the profundity of your voice and your creative agency. Truly, it’s not the critics who count, not at all. They're just noise. As Anton Ego mused in my favorite movie, Ratatouille, “In many ways, the work of a critic is easy. We risk very little, yet enjoy a position over those who offer up their work and their selves to our judgment. We thrive on negative criticism, which is fun to write and to read. But the bitter truth we critics must face, is that in the grand scheme of things, the average piece of junk is probably more meaningful than our criticism designating it so.”
So turn off those comments sections if you have to, just don’t read them if need be. Find a way to cope around them because they’re just a form of creative and mental pollution. And they don’t speak the truth do they? Nope. Why? Because they don’t speak to your Truth. Only you know your Truth, and that’s really the only thing that counts. As Georgia O’Keeffe wisely said, “I have already settled it for myself so flattery and criticism go down the same drain and I am quite free.” Think of Neo stopping the bullets in The Matrix. That sort of thing. So get to that point of detachment, of independent agency and autonomy. You want to get to a point where you can forge ahead in your art regardless of the public response, and why? Because you simply love creating it so much, you always know how to get yourself home.
Embrace The Happy Mistake
Often times when we're truly open to the creative process — which is hopefully all the time —we leave our work vulnerable to a "happy mistake" or "happy accident," an error that ends up advantageous beyond what we could've engineered or envisioned. These are incredible gifts from the universe we should absolutely preserve throughout the creative process. Absolutely, never take a happy mistake for granted! Why? Because they almost always lead to a better piece. So even if it deviates from your initial vision, if a happy mistake has been given to you, cherish it and protect it.
So not all failures are "bad," are they? No, some can actually be incredible dollops of unintended genius! But if you're too fixated on not making errors, you're not going to recognize a happy mistake for what it is when it's gifted to you and plow right over it. Ack! So always stay open and receptive to all the possibilities in the creative process, especially in realism. "There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy," wrote Shakespeare, and nothing can be said truer than for art, even realism!
Exploration and Learning
Here’s the trick to remember: The human brain refines things by making mistakes, that’s literally how it learns. In this framework then, mistakes aren’t your enemies — they’re your conduits for deeper learning. If you want to progress then, you must learn to embrace your mistakes for the gifts that they are. In this, work to recognize them, contemplate them, learn from them, and correct them…then gleefully stride forwards to make more. In fact, it’s those artists who make the most mistakes who learn and progress the fastest.
So rather than spin your wheels on a single piece trying to get it “perfect,” apply this philosophy instead: “Each horse is practice for the next,” as wisely advised by Ed Gonzales. See, when it comes to improvement, volume counts! So get into the studio and makes lots of new work. Make mistakes and make more art. “Don't think about making art, just get it done. Let everyone else decide if it's good or bad, whether they love it or hate it. While they are deciding, make even more art,” said Andy Warhol. Absolutely spot on.
So learn to turn every mistake into a pro-active learning experience rather than let it be a point of critical failure that stops you. Indeed, if you aren’t making mistakes, you aren’t stretching your skills far enough….so streeeetch, reach for that brass ring! You may not ever catch it, but it’s in the stretching where the magic is found.
Understand The Way
If you're an artist serious about what you do, you'll be seeking improvement with each new piece. It's just what you'll do, as a matter of course. This is because there's a latent disfavor artists have with their own work, they're never quite truly satisfied with it. You know what I mean. As Martha Graham put it, "No artist is pleased...No satisfaction whatever at any time. There is only a queer divine dissatisfaction, a blessed unrest that keeps us marching..." But this isn't such a bad thing, it keeps us hungry and curious explorers. It keeps us from getting complacent or too satisfied, the death knell for any progress, for any great work. The point is, whatever you may interpret as a faceplant because you're a bit dissatisfied with your piece, it actually isn't. Nope. It's a normal reaction, a normal feeling. Keep going.
And even the greats are constantly striving, even after decades of success. When the legendary cellist Pablo Casals was asked why he still practiced at ninety, he said, "Because I think I'm making progress." And Michelangelo was said to have quipped at eighty years old, "At last my apprenticeship is finished, I am ready to begin."
Dissatisfaction, unrest, and ever-striding sensibilities aren't indicative of faceplants, they're just intrinsic to the artistic Way. It's just part and parcel to arting. Embrace it all and keep moving forwards, knowing that you're making more progress than you realize. Remember, "every piece is practice for the next," advises Ed Gonzales. Words to create by.
Learn to Embrace Vulnerability
Arting isn’t for the faint of heart. It takes so much moxie and daring to create it. In so doing, you leave yourself wide open to the world each and every time you create something new. You make yourself completely vulnerable, belly up, laid bare. “There is nothing more vulnerable than creativity,” said Brené Brown, and she goes onto reveal, ”Vulnerability is the birthplace of creativity. To create is to make something that has never existed before. There's nothing more vulnerable than that.”
So yeah, exposing your soft underbelly to the world is literally a prerequisite to being an artist. So because creativity is born from vulnerability — that reaching out, that attempt to make a connection regardless of the outcome — you must learn to actively and joyfully and foolishly make yourself vulnerable each and every time you create a new piece. You must learn to darn those torpedoes again and be uncommonly courageous and brave. And by courageous, I mean exactly that: The root word of courage is “cor,” the Latin word for “heart.” So in the early form of “courage,” the word meant to “speak one’s mind by telling all of one’s heart.” This is different from bravery, which is “To treat with bravado; to challenge, to defy,” which you’ll also need in spades. And especially so in our niche art form that happens to be quite cruel and vocal born of the intrinsic comparisons our works are subjected to against each other and to the real living animal. And ooooo boy, can it be a pummeling!
As such, creating art is this very strange blend of vulnerability and invincibility, of being a massive target but being bulletproof at the same time, of being deeply engaged but also detached. The trick is knowing where to invest your energy in all that — in the arting part and not the fallout. Because the important bit is the willingness to make yourself vulnerable time and again because that’s where you’ll be creating new work. And that’s always the overriding prime directive, isn’t it? Getting back into the studio to make new work — joyfully, enthusiastically, lovingly, and regardless of success or failure, of kudos or criticism? And with time and practice, learning to make yourself vulnerable doesn’t become easier — it never becomes easier — but you'll learn how to manage it all to better weather the storms. You simply learn to dive head first into engagement while still finding detachment in the outcome, and the byproduct of that is easier vulnerability…and lots more new work.
Consider Your Genius
When it comes to finding that necessary detachment, contemplate the concept of the “genius” in ancient Greek and Roman culture, and consider how useful it is for processing failure. In this, genius wasn’t something inside of you, derived from you, it was actually an attendant spirit, an independent entity, that showed up to help an artist create their work, often their best work. So when that artist “failed” in a piece, it wasn’t entirely their fault, was it? Their genius simply didn’t show up to do their job. What a tremendous way to free the human psyche of bitter creative failure and backlash! Because, hey, every artist has a "bad art day." Every single one. Not everything we create will be the pinnacle of awesome, and that's okay. We're human after all. Plus, even the problematic, troublesome pieces have something awesome to offer — learning, enlightenment, humility, and the blessed moxie to try again.
So try to pull yourself out of your own creative head from time to time. Like take breaks if needed, rest your creative mind when warranted, try other new things to distract you for a time. Overall, find a way to keep failure in perspective in relation to your personhood and wellbeing. Like will it really matter five years down the line? Is it preventing you from arting at all? If not, you're probably overthinking things again which is easy to do, but problematic to indulge sometimes.
Become the Beholder
The fact is that you have to create a lot of work, both good and bad, to eventually produce those few stellar pieces that will shine above the rest. Yes—not everything you create will be so spectacular. You will create the problematic piece or the humdrum work at some point — that’s part of being human, that’s part and parcel of the creative journey, and that’s just the nature of the creative beast. And it’s a beautiful thing. So embrace the ups and downs because every point along that trajectory has something insightful to offer you.
There’s this, too — for every piece out there, there’s a person out there somewhere who will love it. Yes — every piece. As they say, “beauty is in the eye of the beholder,” and there’s a whole lotta eyes on this planet. So if your art falls short in your eyes as a failure but still manages to touch and move someone out there, that’s actually a win! A big one! So let go and allow your work to do its job of connecting with people in its own way. You’ve created it, yes, but now it’s time to let it go out into the world to speak on its own terms. So stop putting so many conditions on it and just let it freely go, giving yourself permission to embrace any mistakes it might have as simply the quirky parts of the work.
And never forget, only you know the truth of your vision. Only you know how far you deviated away from it with your finished piece. Only you see all its supposed flaws and mistakes. Yet to another viewer, it’s a masterpiece! Really, they have no clue about all that stuff — they just don’t see it. Not because they’re silly and not because they’re ignorant. The truth is that they’re actually seeing the bigger picture that you’re missing. They’re seeing the actual truth of your work, the more rounded perspective. Why? Because of the negative bias hardwired in your head that fixates on all the “bad” aspects of your piece, all the mistakes. Probably engineered by evolution to increase our survival by skirting threats, likewise, that negative bias will simply fixate on all the perceived flaws in your work and ignore all the good stuff — then replay it all in your head until it becomes a fixation. But this is exactly why we can get a thousand congratulatory comments to instead focus on the one nasty quip way out of proportion and ad nauseam. It’s also why we’ll fall into the trap of negatively comparing our work to others rather than focus on all the great parts of our work that are right there in front of our noses. So here’s the point: Our negative bias isn’t telling you the truth but presenting a lop-sided skew of reality that you should regard with a hefty grain of salt. The real truth incorporates all the good in your piece, too, right? In this light then, regularly patting yourself on the back is the highest form of creative self-care so practice it often and enthusiastically. Become your own best advocate and cheerleader! And above all, speak to yourself as a helpful mentor or teacher rather than as a bully trying to make you quit.
Practice Wabi-Sabi
In wabi-sabi, the Japanese concept of imperfection and impermanence, there's no right or wrong, no success or failure, there’s only the making of the work in all its imperfect, transitory, authentic glory. So you have full license to “fail,” to make mistakes, to pull up short, as long as your practice of making your piece was embraced, savored, meditated on, and acknowledged with a full heart and true sincerity. That you fully accepted the true gift of the creative journey in the full breadth that it was given, and not what you wanted it to be, and certainly not what the world said it should have been — but simply for what it was, on its own terms. It’s the full recognition of our humanity in the making of art. Here process is placed over product as the Truth is found in the making, not in the perfect outcome…so let it all go. Yes — just let all that baggage of perfection go. Let it crack and fall away to reveal a fresher, more authentic avenue of creating your art.
What's more, horses aren't perfect, are they? They each have as much physical individuality and quirkiness as we do, and what a wonderful thing! So wabi-sabi asks us to stop objectifying them into our idea of perfect, doesn't it? It asks us to appreciate each horse as they are, in all their curiosities, brilliance, authenticity, and agency, on their own terms. What a marvelous new perspective!
Likewise, their living bodies are full of "errors" if we're to interpret an anatomy diagram literally. That's to say that instead of the tidy packages of muscle and sinew and bone an anatomy chart would have us believe, living horses are instead messy, organic, and full of goo and moment, ever changing and mercurial. What a marvelous thing to explore in our art! But if we're too negatively fixated on failure, on mistakes, on what is "wrong" and unconventional, we're going to miss all this good stuff and the opportunity for infusing a living quality into our clay or pigment. So stay open to the incredible possibilities by letting go of your fear of failure, your fear of imperfection, as that's the pathway to truer realism.
As such, it’s through living the wabi-sabi way in our realism that we can find even more freedom from the crushing pressure of failure. We’re given permission to be human again and to emphasize the practice, the Way, of being an artist rather than being so tunnel-visioned with the perfect end product all the time. What a freeing point of view! We also open the door to attaining even more realism in our art as we start looking for those delightful touches of chaos and moment in life to infuse into our work. But best of all, perhaps we come to appreciate this lovely creature as they actually are rather than continually loading onto them the "should be" baggage horses too often endure. Objectification is the partner to perfectionism! If we can do that then, a whole new dimension of horsedom opens up, offering us a monumental win win!
Adopt Surrender
Like wabi-sabi, the Japanese concept of "shōganai" can be very helpful in the face of failure. Most simply, "shōganai" is a phrase that one says that means, "it can't be helped," or "it's beyond our control," releasing someone of guilt or disappointment. It's about accepting Fate, surrendering to forces beyond our control, of rolling with the punches, with the closest equivalent in English being "it is what it is" or in French, "c'est la vie" ("such is life"). So when we abut failure, tell yourself, "shōganai," and move on. Really, if it could have unfolded any other way, it would have. That was all you were capable of creating at that moment, and that's okay. In this way, shōganai helps us to maintain our composure and resilience, setting us up for a new try with a new piece in better spirits next time. Indeed, there's a tremendous wisdom in shōganai and, in fact, it's not just a phrase, it's actually a whole attitude, a way of being in Japan that imbues the culture with great poise in the face of natural disaster and hardship. Adopt it, and you'll find not only a new freedom in your efforts, but a new kind of hope and enthusiasm in your work as your Muse is released of so much pressure to perform perfectly.
Infinite Re-dos
Always remember that you're the creator, you have the magic here. In this, you can unmake anything you make, uncreate anything you create, or start again. Really, you have infinite re-dos. So if you make a mistake...no biggie! Just try again. "Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts," said Winston Churchill. So just backtrack a little bit, problem solve your way through it, and voilá...you got this!
Conclusion
Ultimately every artist finds their own coping mechanisms with failure because it’s simply the inevitable partner of arting. It’s the shadow to every new piece of art. There’s no avoiding failure, only ways to mitigate it, only ways to live with it. And in our taskmaster art form of equine realism, in particular, failure is something we should learn to embrace, even celebrate for the insignia of our humanity that it is.
The point is, if we let a fear of failure stop us in this art form, we won’t be creating at all, will we? Indeed, there are folks in our community who never take up tool or brush out of fear of “I’m not good enough,” or “I’ll just screw it up,” or "I'm afraid what people will say." More still, some have even stopped arting altogether as realism's intensity has gone through the roof these past twenty years. All of this is a real shame, and an avoidable one. Because we’ve all had to start somewhere, right? We all start out as newbies! So give yourself permission to be a beginner again. Remember, you have to be really terrible at something before you get good at it, right? Every artist has been there. And I wish more folks would interpret a raised bar as a call to action rather than as an impetus to quit. Because your voice matters, and it matters a lot. Aside from being important for its own sake, our art form needs your voice to keep it from falling into boring homogeneity and clinical stagnation. Your voice helps to keep our art form vibrant, evolving, fresh, innovative, and human. Your voice is actually pretty priceless and always welcome!
But even more than that, arting is very good for you — good for the heart, the soul, the mind, and the guts. When it brings you great joy then, that’s a beautiful thing, a thing that you deserve. So learn to live with failure to preserve that joy, to reclaim your right to your art so that you can foster this lovely sanctuary and creative adventure with an open heart and full enthusiasm. In many ways then, learning to live with failure can make you invincible, make you bulletproof, it can truly make you free in your creativity. Indeed, when you no longer fear failure, your potential goes right off the charts and you gain the motivation to stretch ever further. Ultimately then, learning to be fearless actually leads to vast improvements of your work because, truly, the only thing to fear in art is fear itself.
In this then, failure isn’t the end, is it? Nope. It’s the beginning, the start of something wonderful. Each mistake is an opportunity to do better next time, it’s an invitation, not a shut door. So approach failure with this spin, and there’s no work you can’t conquer, no piece beyond your reach! So while you'll experience failure after failure in our art form — we all will — you don’t have to be fatigued by it! You can actually find a new kind of energy in failure, one that will propel you forwards like no other way can. So lean into that great love of yours, and grab failure by the tail and don’t let go! Let it pull you forwards, fast…just keep scrambling to keep up! Pretty soon, you'll learn to hydroplane with it and coast along, cruisin' in joy. In this light, there’s no failure fatigue, only mistake motivation as it becomes a glorious call to action. Practice failure in this way and you’re well on your way to both tremendous success and an exquisite experience on your creative journey! Or said another way, practice your love of arting fearlessly and your horizon becomes wide open as only love can do. With great love comes great art, the two are inseparable, so don't split them apart! Instead, leap into it with full abandon, shrieking "$&%# it!," and you'll most assuredly make a friend of failure!
“Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep.”
— Scott Adams
