Failure is high art. Flame me for saying it, but no one who has ever succeeded has not tasted the multiple flavors of failure repeatedly. Dissecting the taste becomes an art form in itself.

At first, failure is rather appalling and bitter. My first instinct is to spit it out and break the glass. But once I realized I may taste this again whether I want to or not, I thought of it like penicillin, a medicine that could heal what was wrong in my work.

As an artist we thrive on creativity, on expression and passion. But in error, we may measure that creativity against the acceptance or rejection of the work, or the expectation of what it should do. And if the work does not meet the expectation we taste it as failure.

Now if we let this taste linger on our palette long enough we can learn to distinguish the flavors. What ingredients created this taste. Without rejecting the criticism of the creation, we may be able to pull the ingredients.

I think of myself as a chemist, a Walter Bishop (Fringe- for non-fans) of my work. I study both the success and failure of similar creations finding the common ingredients in each.

Then I go back to my creation and reformulate it adding the successful ingredients I discovered and experiment again. The more I do this and don't reject the failure elements the more I can pinpoint exactly what is causing the taste.

And soon enough like all the great artists, inventors, creators and innovators we must keep working this out until the taste of success comes.