I’ve never trusted perfection. It looks polished but rarely feels alive.
In art, as in life, what moves me most are the flaws — the brushstroke that slips, the uneven texture, the color that bleeds too far. Those moments feel human. They show that something real passed through the surface.
When I paint, I’m not trying to make something flawless. I’m trying to capture a pulse. I want the work to breathe, to look like it’s been lived in — like it remembers something. Maybe that’s why I love the aesthetics of imperfection: because they allow emotion to exist openly, without the armor of control.
In a culture that worships the finished and the filtered, imperfection becomes an act of freedom.
The Beauty of the Unfinished
Throughout history, artists have played with the idea of incompleteness.
In Japanese aesthetics, the concept of wabi-sabi celebrates the beauty of impermanence — the chipped bowl, the faded fabric, the line that breaks. Renaissance painters often left underdrawings visible beneath translucent layers of pigment. Even the Symbolists and Expressionists, centuries later, embraced decay and distortion as forms of truth.
Imperfection has always been the shadow of authenticity. It reminds us that everything is temporary, that beauty is not symmetry but presence. I think that’s why aged frescoes, cracked glazes, or frayed textiles draw us in — they contain traces of time.
In my own work, I try to keep those traces visible. When the paint drips or the metallic sheen catches light unevenly, I don’t correct it. Those irregularities are part of the story. They’re where emotion enters the surface.
The Emotional Language of Flaws
Psychologically, imperfection communicates honesty. Smoothness feels distant; roughness feels human. Our brains respond to irregular patterns — asymmetry, layered texture, shifting tone — as signs of depth. That’s why imperfect objects feel more approachable.
In painting, I often layer colors that don’t “match.” Neon beside earth tones, sacred gold against industrial grey. The contrast creates vibration — the kind that feels alive, unpredictable. That tension, between harmony and disruption, is what gives a piece emotional charge.
I think this mirrors human experience. We’re not built in clean lines. We carry contradiction, memory, and change. To make art that hides those imperfections feels dishonest to me — like pretending life is something it isn’t.
Imperfection as Identity
Many of my works explore identity through distortion.
The faces I paint are rarely symmetrical. Their makeup is theatrical, exaggerated — lower lashes like smudged stage paint, hair that looks both vintage and futuristic, eyes that know too much. These details are not errors; they’re expressions. They resist the idea of flawless beauty.
In a way, they’re about reclaiming imperfection as a form of individuality. The theatricality, the intensity, the strangeness — it all becomes a language of freedom. I think about women in Renaissance portraits, frozen into ideals of composure, and how modern femininity still wrestles with that pressure. My figures break it. They are emotional, unapologetic, visibly human.
The same applies to interiors and aesthetics. A room filled with imperfect textures — wrinkled linen, chipped ceramics, mismatched frames — feels lived in, not staged. It carries warmth, story, and contradiction. That’s what real freedom looks like in space: the acceptance that beauty doesn’t need to be clean to be complete.
Freedom in the Process
There’s a kind of liberation that happens when you stop trying to control the outcome.
When I paint, I often let instinct lead — one brushstroke deciding the next, one accident turning into rhythm. It’s less about planning and more about trust.
That unpredictability gives the work a pulse. The drips, the uneven lines, the overexposed colors — they become reminders of touch. Of time. Of imperfection as evidence of presence.
Maybe that’s why imperfect art feels more human. Because it carries not just what was made, but how it was made — every decision, every hesitation, every mistake that became meaning.
Why Imperfection Matters Now
In the age of digital perfection, where every image is corrected, the raw and the imperfect have a different power. They remind us of reality — not the one that fits into grids, but the one that moves, cracks, and breathes.
Freedom, to me, lies in that acceptance. To make, to live, to decorate, without editing out the signs of life.
To let the fingerprints show.
Because in the end, imperfection isn’t the opposite of beauty.
It’s the part of beauty that still belongs to us
