Back in week three, our MA discussion focused on failure – what it is, why it stings, and how to use it. We explored why personal mistakes feel threatening, why we often learn more easily from other people’s missteps. I’ve also been thinking about learning and how it’s so intricately mediated by our nervous systems.
In my process-led practice I loop between making, thinking, rethinking, and making again. Failure isn’t a detour in that loop – it’s part of the road.
“Those who say ‘yes’ are rewarded by the adventures they have. Those who say ‘no’ are rewarded by the safety they attain.” ~Keith Johnstone
I want to choose “yes” more often, even when my nervous system finds it uncomfortable.
Failure can teach us but only if we’re receptive.
- Ego gets in the way. When something flops, my self-esteem can tip into fight-or-flight. The urge is to defend, ignore, or run from the data.
- We forget what we got wrong. My instinct is to move on quickly instead of tracing the exact moment things drifted.
- School trains us to be right. A lifetime of correct answers makes experiments feel risky.
- Identification tightens the grip. If I’m over-attached to being “a good artist” or to a fixed outcome, any wobble feels like a threat.
Third-Person Reflection: Finding Distance From “Failure”
We each wrote, in the third person, about something we’d failed at. I described how the Scottish school holidays – and the chaos they bring – disrupted my normal working hours. Writing it as a short report helped: she tried to timetable studio time, the day dissolved into childcare and logistics, so the making slid to late nights.
That third-person distance stopped the usual self-berating and shifted me into analysis instead. A practical plan emerged: I need to balance the reality of odd-hour work with deliberate time to step away from conscious art thinking, so ideas can process. In other words, keep what works about late sessions, but pair them with recovery and incubation time – a kinder rhythm that sustains the practice.
A Behavior-Change Lens- A cyclical process.
Prochaska & DiClemente’s model of behaviour change from my (far distant) nursing studies reminds me that change is circular, not linear:
Pre-contemplation → Contemplation → Preparation → Action → Maintenance → Relapse/Recycle → back with more information.
Seeing failure inside a loop helps me welcome unpredictability without panic and choose one compassionate next step.
Donald Schön’s reflective practice model works the same way: we learn in moments of surprise, puzzlement, or confusion by pausing to reflect and then trying a small experiment. I recognise that well worn path in my studio: make – notice – adjust – try again.
It’s all in the mind.
Research suggests we’re surprisingly bad at learning from our own mistakes. When something goes wrong, the fight-or-flight response (sympathetic nervous system) can kick in, with the amygdala helping detect threat and initiate the body’s protective stress response. In that state we tend to defend, dismiss, or rush past the data. Conversely, when our bodies are in the rest & restore mode (parasympathetic nervous system activation) reflection and learning from our experiences happens far more effectively.
Interestingly, people are more open to learning from other people’s mistakes. There’s built-in psychological distance: no felt shame, less self-blame, more curiosity.
The lesson: if distance helps, we can create it for ourselves.
While I’m making art, I observe my mind judging, and identifying whether my efforts are successful or not. When I notice this happening, I intentionally try to loosen identification with the perceived outcome I’m working towards. The paradigm shifts. I give myself permission to explore rather than produce. The pressure of the logical mind lifts and another part of my nervous system takes charge. The spontaneous concentration I often experience during this free flowing process allows me to respond to what’s happening in front of me, without the need to constantly intellectualise my every move. It’s more a physical process of senses, materials and looking. Often, there isn’t time to think and plan things through. It’s almost as if too many thoughts during this process is a hindrance.
However, when I approach making with ‘wrong’ frame of mind things rarely run so smoothly. There! I admitted it. Maybe there are “rights” and “wrongs” in my making- but they are entirely to do with the attitude I bring to the process rather than the outcome.
It’s like dancing along a tight rope- there needs to be a balance of playfulness on one hand, but with a sense of direction. It’s not just experimentation- it’s experimentation with purpose. It’s about I need to be ready to respond to that sway of the tightrope the second it moves- recalibrate, rebalance while moving in a forward direction. I’m also learning that falling, and having to start the process again is not a failure. Muscle memory retains every so-called mistake and strengthens my ability to respond the next time I feel the rope move under my feet.
Failure as a Public Good
A line from our course notes stayed with me: “The info in failure is a public good. When it is shared, society benefits.”
I love this. It shifts failing from a private shame to a shared resource. When artists publish process notes, tests, and dead ends, the field moves forward. It also builds a culture where trying something that might not work is normal, not hidden from view. I’m realising how important it is to have the courage to experiment in my practice.
Failure brings progress.
Rather than betting the whole project each time, I’m leaning into small, cheap, reversible tests – just enough risk to learn, not enough to paralyse.
I’ve been experimenting so much recently that there are too many failures to mention. I’m really surprised by the headway I feel I’ve made though. Small test boards of encaustic (beeswax courtesy of my bees & damar resin) felt intimidating & too delicate to touch at first. After a few days of experimenting, I realised that the multiple layers of medium were just the dynamic surface I’d been searching for. I needed a surface that could hold fine detail, be layered up and scraped back quickly, while embodying the qualities of light in solid form. Beeswax is such an incredibly forgiving and malleable material. It invites touch and holds the scent of pollen, nectar and propolis once stored within it. Each batch of wax is unique in colour & scent.
An encaustic surface can record the smallest most delicate imprints – fingerprints, plant tendrils and leaf skeletons are recorded with intricate detail. Beeswax is naturally adhesive- especially given hives are often full of propolis (bee-glue made by bees chewing sticky tree resin). While the encaustic is warm, this stickiness can grab pigment really nicely. Soluble graphite powder is a new discovery that works really well for this process. Initially the graphite is beautifully encased in a ghostly layer of wax but if the wax is heated beyond melting point, the graphite dispenses into the wax and starts to have a life of its own. Much like blooms in watercolour paint. I plan to explore this beautiful and unexpected movement of the graphite within the wax. The versatility of having a medium that can be worked both as a liquid, and a semi solid surface is very interesting . Not only this but once cured, encaustic hardens, protects and illuminates the materials buried within it.
