Failure is absolutely critical to growth.
As an artist and a teacher I have found that no failure means stretching, exploring, or trying new things. If every piece is exactly as you expected it to be than you are more than likely following a formula for success that you have developed over time to avoid failure. At some point, for me, that would gt boring. I now believe that true learning only takes place when you have exhausted all the options of prior knowledge. Trite as it may sound, failure really is an opportunity for learning.
By way of example…in my paintings every now and then I have a piece that just sucks. I just know its not working. It may be on the edge of working but its not quite there. It becomes one of my ‘what the heck’ pieces. I am not happy with it anyway so, what the heck, why not take a chance on completely destroying it by trying something wild and new? I have learned so much doing this.
In art making, failure is an opportunity.

I cannot not think of a situation I would describe as a failure. It is not a word I attach to my work in the studio. Frustration or dissatisfaction I have often used to describe my experience or my products from the studio. But failure? No. I have heard that the only failure is the failure to show up. Maybe that is true, but for me, I have experienced important times of “gestation”. As to the work….some paintings just take longer than others!!! Failure implies giving up.
Joan Fullerton

If it’s a technical failure, then it’s a learned lesson. If it’s a design failure, then it’s a learned lesson. If it’s a personal failure, it’s a learned lesson.
While I don’t embrace failure, I don’t let it paralyze me. I move on. Failure is something to be managed.

Everyone’s answer here resonates with me much more than the panel discussion that I attended where this question was asked.
The artists on the panel essentially denied they ever failed and for the most part avoided discussing the topic at all. It ended up being a rather academic and uninteresting panel with no one willing to be vulnerable or admit that failure happens.
I personally think I fail all the time and it is something to be embraced as it is a sign of forward movement. We tend not to fail if we aren’t pushing ourselves. Safe is great but it also gets boring.

I’ve always embraced the idea of failure like in the saying, “Mistakes are a Buddhist gift”. They are always learning opportunities. There are small ones and big ones, and you get to choose where you go with them. Ultimately a failure can stop you dead in your tracks if you let it. Yes there are epic failures. And I am much more curious, and frankly happy, with the idea that goofs/mistakes/failures take me down a different path. Sometimes the better question is not how is this piece failing, to what does the painting need? Its the theory of happy accidents.

One of my favorite Winston Churchill quotes: “Success is not final, failure is not fatal: It is the courage to continue that counts”…

I’m not sure there is really such a thing as a failure in painting, or really, in anything. A failure in painting is an incomplete painting. A failure in making a light bulb is discovering a way not to make a light bulb, in other words, really a step toward. It’s viewpoint and perception.
I use “failure” or for me, not liking where a painting is going, as an indicator that that session on that painting has continued long enough, and some time apart is needed. Many, many times the stuff I had attention on and “hated” will turn into either a good turn in the painting tomorrow, or the launching place for a solution to the problem presented.
Maybe failure is the decision not to persist in finding a solution, whether by choice or by external influence, and maybe that view of failure in that moment is exactly that – failure from that point of view and not failure at all if you step aside from it, and take a different point of view…

Of course, one might ask more specifically, is it a failure, in art, to not make a profit?

I used to hate producing a painting that was a failure, that was uninspired, off-looking, just not right.
But over the past year, I’ve learned to come to grips with this as an important part of the process of developing as a painter.
Yesterday, I went out painting en plein air. The lighting was overcast and uninspired. Consequently, the painting was uninspired. The lesson learned? I need to be inspired by nature as that is the energy that puts the magic in my paintings.
THe lesson learned also was that back in the studio, you can continue the learning process on ‘failed’ paintings to try to resurrect them. I was able to move the field piece from boring and blah to better. Again, more lessons learned.
I still don’t like it when I have a painting for the campfire or trash heap. But now I am wise enough to know that these failed paintings shape my learning more than the successful ones. They are a bitter sweet gift. No, I won’t be a successful artist trying to sell these failed paintings. But they DO teach me critical lessons that drive me to learn and to do better.
Failed paintings are a gift.

Failure HAS to happen – it’s the face-palm of learning, at least in my book. I learn what NOT to do, and I remember the life lessons of my failures much more powerfully than the successes of those few paintings that magically fall from my brushes.
But embracing and admitting to failure was at first a difficult thing to do publicly. I am a daily painter of nearly 8 years, and when I first started painting daily, if I was having a rough run, it got grim in the studio pretty quickly. What the heck was I supposed to post? I feared going public with my failure, thinking it was bad PR. But the reality was, when I finally ponied up and confessed to having a suckey day at the easel, the response was overwhelming.
My readers saw the human side of my work/struggle/commitment and respected me all the more for it. We engaged in conversations about falling short and shared coping mechanisms, no matter our calling in life. And we laughed over it.
Failure = courage to try something new.
And those who are afraid of it are busy stagnating!
Bummer that the panel didn’t recognize the power of admitting failure happens, Lisa!

First things first – Great topic..!! Many encouraging words by all has become my real inspiration and I have started painting again. Thank you all..!!