Creativity is Allowing Yourself to Make Mistakes
Scott Adams said it perfectly. "Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep."
I've been painting long enough to know this is true.
Some of my favourite pieces started as disasters. A colour that went wrong. A line that sat awkwardly. A background that was completely the wrong shade. And then — something shifted. I kept going. I made another decision. And what was a mistake became exactly the thing that made the work interesting.
That's the part nobody talks about enough.
The Mistake Isn't the Problem
We're taught from an early age that mistakes are bad. That precision is the goal. That if something goes wrong, you've failed.
But in creative work, it's the opposite. The mistake is often where the magic is hiding.
A brush mark that smudges unexpectedly. A colour that bleeds beyond its edge. A composition that doesn't quite balance the way you planned. These aren't failures — they're invitations. They ask you to look more closely, respond more instinctively, and make a decision you wouldn't have made otherwise.
That's creativity. Not perfect execution. Responsive making.
If this idea resonates, you might also enjoy reading about embracing imperfections and finding your creative flow — a post that goes deeper into what it means to let go of perfectionism in the studio.
The Harder Skill: Knowing What to Keep
Scott Adams is right that creativity is the permission to make mistakes. But the second part of his quote is where the real work is.
Knowing which ones to keep.
This is the skill that takes time. It's not something you can learn from a formula or a course. It comes from looking at a lot of work — your own and others'. From training your eye. From understanding what you're trying to say with a piece and recognising when an accident has said it better than your intention would have.
I've kept mistakes that became the most defining element of a finished piece. I've also scrapped work that could have been saved if I'd been willing to sit with it longer.
Both are useful. The discernment develops slowly, over years of showing up to the practice.
What This Looks Like in My Own Collections
The Flowers of Oz collection — my first — is full of happy accidents. Colour combinations I didn't plan. Marks that happened and then stayed because they were more interesting than what I'd intended. That collection more than any other taught me to trust the process over the plan.
The same is true of the work in my abstract and modern series. The boldness that characterises those pieces came directly from sessions where I stopped caring whether something was going wrong and just kept painting. The results surprised me. They still do.
The artists whose work moves you most are almost always the ones who've made thousands of mistakes — and who've developed the eye to know which ones were worth keeping.
What This Looks Like in Practice
Give yourself permission to make a mess. Start with the intention to experiment, not to produce something perfect. Let the materials lead sometimes. Notice what happens when you don't control everything.
Then step back. Look at what you've made honestly. Ask: what's working here, even if I didn't plan it? What's interesting, even if it's wrong?
Sometimes the answer is nothing — and you start again. But often there's something worth keeping. A mark, a colour relationship, an energy in the surface that a more careful approach wouldn't have created.
That's the practice. Make. Look. Decide. Keep going.
The Connection Between Mistakes and Style
Here's something I've come to believe deeply: your artistic style — the thing that makes your work recognisably yours — is largely built from your relationship with your own mistakes.
The marks you keep. The accidents you lean into. The departures from the plan that you decide to honour rather than correct. Over time, these choices accumulate into something that is completely your own. Something no one else would have made, because no one else would have made exactly those mistakes and kept exactly those ones.
Finding your artistic style is not a process of elimination — it's a process of accumulation. The mistakes are the material.
The artists who develop a real voice aren't the ones who make the fewest mistakes. They're the ones who make the most, and who've learned to see what's valuable in them.
Warmly, Kirsten x
