Imperfect Art Is Good, Actually

(And So Are You)

Perfection can be boring and sterile; sometimes, it can feel like the artistic equivalent of everything is a shade of beige. It's technically sound and aesthetically pleasing, sure, but everything starts to look the same.

Imperfect art, on the other hand? That’s where the magic lives.

There’s a Japanese aesthetic called wabi-sabi — a love of the imperfect, transient, and incomplete. Broken pottery repaired with precious metal. Worn out elbows of a shirt mended with vibrant colors.. The natural human voice that, when singing, bends “off-pitch” but says everything.

An example of kintsugi. Mending with gold joinery.

It’s not about technical skill. It’s about humanity.

Imperfect art is life. It reminds us there’s a person behind the brushstroke, the lyric, or the pen — not a machine, not AI, but a real person trying their best.

an AI-generated image using Canva with the prompt "picture perfect porcelain lady gazing out a windo

My sketch of a bird.

(Above left: an AI-generated image using Canva with the prompt "picture perfect porcelain lady gazing out a window at a picturesque spring scene". Above right: My sketches of a bird.)

Many of us started treating art like a test or pop quiz somewhere along the way. As if we're going to get called into the principal’s office and handed a report card: “Your shading’s off. Your rhythm is inconsistent. Your lines are squiggly. You sang off-key.”

But art isn’t a product to measure against an industry standard — it’s an emotion, a language. And honest communication is rarely clean. It stutters. It mumbles. It says the wrong thing and tries again. That’s what makes it real.

Think of your favorite song. Your favorite movie. Your favorite comic or doodle. Odds are, it’s not “perfect” — it just made you feel something. Maybe even because it was rough around the edges.

Imperfect art reminds us we’re not alone in being unpolished ourselves. It makes room. Creates space.

Creating imperfect art means accepting our imperfections. It’s a defiant act that says, "I don’t need to be flawless to be worth hearing. I don’t need to be perfect to be powerful."

It can be scary. Especially in a world that loves polish, filters, and carefully curated everything. But the truth is, the more we allow our weird little quirks and flaws into our work, the more human it becomes. The more us it becomes.

We’re not a factory. We’re not a brand. We’re people. Messy, inconsistent, and constantly learning. And that’s not a flaw — that’s the source.

So what do we do? We do the thing, post the incomplete sketch, share the poem with too many adjectives, and sing off-key. We stop asking, 'Is it good enough?' and start asking, 'Did this make me happy? Did I have a good time?'

We let the cracks show — and maybe fill them with gold because imperfect art is good, actually.  And so are you.