There’s a deep kind of relief that comes when we stop trying to make things perfect. When we realise that perfection is neither a necessary goal nor even a desirable one. That perhaps authenticity —and even beauty— emerge precisely from what slips, breaks, or doesn’t quite fit.
The attitude of imperfection is not about giving up. It’s an active form of acceptance. A way of saying: “this is what it is, and that’s okay”. It means trusting that even if a gesture is irregular or unfinished, it can hold truth. And it can move us.
Creating from this place means letting go of a weight. The weight of total control, of paralysing self-demand, of fear of making mistakes. Instead, we allow ourselves to be in the process as it is: uncertain, fragmentary, alive.
In this sense, the Japanese concept of wabi-sabi resonates powerfully: a way of understanding the world that finds beauty in imperfection, simplicity, and the passage of time. It’s not just an aesthetic idea —it’s a way of seeing. A way of valuing cracks, irregular forms, and matter that wears its scars without hiding them.
Wabi-sabi invites us to look at a cracked cup as something full of life. To find poetry in a crooked branch. To love what is not symmetrical, not polished, not shiny. And when we approach our creative practice with this lens, something softens. We no longer need to create wonders —we just need to be present.
If I had to name artists who embody this attitude of imperfection as creative force, I couldn’t choose just one. Perhaps the clearest example —with his spontaneous gestures, half-erased words, and beauty rising from chaos— would be Cy Twombly. But I also see this sensibility in Antoni Tàpies, with his raw materials and primitive signs; in Giuseppe Penone, letting nature speak through time and gesture; in Rebecca Horn, through her fragile machines and impossible rituals. And among Eastern artists, it echoes in the quiet gestures of Lee Kang-So, in the silent ink washes of Gao Xingjian, and in the wind-drawn lines of Rikuo Ueda. In all of them, imperfection is not a flaw —it is language, breath, listening.
The attitude of imperfection is also about trust in the process. About being able to release a work before it’s finished, to not correct every irregularity, to know that sometimes what’s most meaningful appears when we’re no longer trying to “get it right”. In those moments of imbalance, a crack opens for the most honest kind of expression.
It’s not about rejecting quality or rigour, but about realising that not everything needs to be polished. That beauty can rise from what is rough, scattered, or unresolved. And that maybe, when we see a piece and sense the hand that made it —with its doubts and hesitations— we connect more deeply than we would with something flawless.
Imperfection humanises us. It makes us more real. And in a world that often rewards appearances, cultivating this attitude is also an act of resistance.
To accept imperfection —in the work, in the process, in ourselves— is to accept that we are part of life. And life, like wabi-sabi, is not perfect. But it is deep. And, if we learn to listen, endlessly beautiful.