During the mid-twentieth century, when New York was the centre of the art world and all eyes were on the work of the abstract expressionists, a young British woman called Bridget Riley began to create a cultural shockwave of her own. Her paintings were both striking and original. To stand in front of them was about more than just looking, it was an experience; the repetitive patterns of black and white geometric shapes would dance and pulsate before your eyes.

Movement in Squares by Bridget Riley — Movement in Squares, Bridget Riley, 1961

Riley’s fame quickly spread and so called ‘op art’ became an aesthetic movement, creating waves in advertising, photography and fashion. Riley has continued to experiment and develop similar techniques ever since. Even now, in her nineties, she is still making work that explores the experience of seeing.

And yet this creative direction, which has sustained her for over half a century and made her one of those rare living artists whose work often sells for seven figures, began with failure. A very particular failure. As a young artist Riley was inspired by the pointillists; Georges Seurat in particular. She would copy his work and imitate his technique. One day she made a painting of a Tuscan valley on a hot day.

In a recent BBC documentary Riley spoke about Pink Landscape and her dissatisfaction with it: “Although it was competent, and the best I could do, I felt it did not convey what I had experienced when I was looking at the valley over Sienna under the sizzling heat. And what I had not got was the sensation. I’d missed it. I’d missed the most important thing. The sensation of the heat. The shimmer. The dazzle. The glitter of light. And I wondered really what I had been doing. I’d been going up a wrong path.”

And so Riley decided that she must change direction. She left behind her imitation of the late impressionists and, as a response to her failure, began to experiment with a new approach – one which would soon make her name.

This little known story of how Bridget Riley became the Bridget Riley we know today is an instructive one. There is of course the obvious – though still reassuring – lesson that failure is often the first step on the path to success. Sometimes it takes a painful jolt of frustration to nudge us out of complacency.

Then there is the insight that there is no shame in imitating your heroes, at least to begin with, even if it can only sustain you so far on your creative journey.

But there is also a subtler but more profound point to be gleaned: one which has a resonance beyond painting. And it’s all to do with that word ‘sensation’. Riley felt that Pink Landscape was a failure not because she hadn’t succeeded in showing how the Italian landscape looked beneath the scorching summer sunshine – this she had undoubtedly achieved – but because she had failed to make the viewer feel how she had felt. This insight, the recognition that feeling was more important than seeing, became the foundation of her new artistic direction.

It reminds me of a technique I first came across in Dan Nelken’s recent book on copywriting. He encourages aspiring copywriters who are stuck for the right word not to reach for the thesaurus in search of synonyms, but instead to think about how the word makes them feel. Let’s say you’re looking for an alternative to the word ‘speed’. Look this up in a thesaurus and you’ll turn up words like velocity, pace and acceleration. But think about the sensation of speed and you’ll think of a lurching feeling in your stomach, your eyes streaming with the wind, the intoxicating exhilaration of danger; all of which are far more vivid and powerful ways of making your audience experience the idea of speed.

So next time you sit back and look at the work you’ve just made and think you’ve somehow missed the mark, don’t be too downhearted. Look beyond whatever flaws there may be in the execution, and instead ask yourself what the feeling was that you were trying to convey. If you can be more faithful to that then the next time you pick up your pen or brush may well be far more fruitful.

It’s All About the Feeling: An Inspirational Tale of Artistic Failure