Imperfection in art is something every serious artist struggles against. To avoid it, I practice regularly, attend classes, plan carefully, and keep an extreme focus on detail.
Now and then, though, I have sessions when, at the end, I see flaws in a set of images I created, yet no one else does. The clients tell me they love them, which they prove by purchasing many of them. I see that same love again in their public praise, echoed enthusiastically by their peers. Still, later, on the rare occasion this happens I cringe every time I see the images they love, feeling the tension between what I see and what they feel. Maybe there is a better way to understand it.
In ballet, dancers train every day, rehearse their steps, and focus with absolute precision on choreography. Yet on stage, things happen: the ankle wobbles, an unintended quiver appears in a difficult movement, or the final balance wavers for half a second. The dancer feels the mistake, but the audience feels the performance. They rise to their feet not because it was flawless, but because it told the story in a beautiful and authentic way.
Perfection, in its sterile sense, actually flattens art. The value of art to tell a story comes not from flawlessness, but from mastery that carries feeling and intent; from the moments when the dancer’s artistry, applied with such relentless effort, seeps through technique and becomes something real and beautiful that the audience recognizes.
So perhaps “embracing imperfection” means letting go of the idea that everything must be perfect in the artist’s eyes before it has value; the way Irina Dvorovenko expressed it in Gavin Larsen’s author’s notes about her forthcoming book “Infinite Steps:: “For me, there is no ‘perfect.’ When there is depth in performance, the picture comes alive.”