Dance with Destruction

May 19, 2025


There comes a point in every artist’s journey when the gaze turns inward—not with affection, but with an unflinching honesty. You look at the work you’ve made, this thing you’ve shaped with your hands and heart, and you ask: Is this really it? And more often than not, the answer isn’t a resounding yes. It’s a quiet, stubborn almost.

That word—almost—can haunt you. To most, it’s good enough. Maybe even impressive. But for those chasing something more than completion—for those chasing truth—almost feels like a betrayal whispered beneath the surface. That’s the moment the brush is set down with finality. The moment a canvas is painted over, a sculpture shattered, a draft deleted without ceremony. Not because it wasn’t good, but because it wasn’t right. That’s when the real work begins.

This is the artist’s paradox: the courage to destroy what you’ve lovingly built, not out of recklessness, but out of devotion. To break something you've labored over for hours, days, weeks—every instinct tells you to protect it. We’re taught to finish what we start, to deliver, to move on. But great art doesn’t obey that timeline. It doesn’t care about efficiency. It demands honesty. And sometimes, the first thing we make is just scaffolding for what truly wants to emerge.

Letting go in this way isn’t carelessness. It’s commitment. It’s standing at the edge of “good enough” and refusing to cross it. Not because you’re a perfectionist, but because something deeper is calling. The choice to destroy isn’t self-sabotage—it’s clarity. A decision to honor what could be, rather than settling for what already is.

To do this, an artist has to loosen their grip. Not on their passion, but on their preciousness. You stop treating every piece as sacred, and start seeing it as a step—a necessary one—on a much longer path. And once you do, something shifts. You begin to care not just about the thing itself, but about the process that led you there. Every discarded draft, every erased line, every restart becomes part of the learning. Not waste, but wisdom. Not failure, but fuel.

The temptation to settle is always there. If something looks fine, gets praise, maybe even sells—it’s tempting to call it done. But those walking the road toward mastery know that ease can be deceptive. They know that something can look finished and still feel hollow. That the work that comes too easily often says too little. So they go again—not for drama, but for depth. Not to be seen, but to see more clearly themselves.

To destroy, then, is not to give up. It’s to move forward. It’s to choose growth over ego. It’s the artist’s quiet rebellion against the surface-level, a turning toward something more real.

And when you truly accept that art is a practice, not a performance, repetition becomes freedom. To try again isn’t punishment—it’s pursuit. Painting the same thing a hundred times isn’t a rut. It’s a kind of excavation. You're not stuck. You're digging.

Over time, from beneath the ruins—layer after layer of what didn’t quite work—something more honest begins to rise. Not just in the work, but in the artist. A kind of knowing. A signature of truth that wasn’t there before. And with it, a deeper confidence. Not the kind that seeks validation, but the kind that whispers, this is closer.

So the next time you’re standing in front of something that feels like “almost,” ask yourself—what am I afraid to lose? If the answer is comfort, approval, momentum—destroy it. Not with frustration, but with faith. Faith in the process. Faith in yourself.

Because what you’re letting go of might just be the thing standing in the way of what you were always meant to make.