Ode To Happy Accidents [David’s blog on DR Thursday]

Posted on May 7, 2026 by davidrobinsoncreative

The famous blue-green tint of the Ball jar is the result of a happy accident. In search of cheaper resources the brothers Ball moved their company from Buffalo, NY to Muncie, IN. The minerals found in the sand in Indiana differed from the minerals in the sand in Buffalo and voila! The glass it produced was blue-green.

The story of penicillin is also the story of a happy accident.

The history of abstract art is the story of visual happy accidents. There is a term for happy-accident-painters that I especially appreciate: intuitive painting. It is the art of self-discovery, the art of process over product. As Quinn would say, it is to cultivate serendipity. Jackson Pollock was an intuitive painter. Helen Frankenthaler was an intuitive painter. Hilma of Klint was an intuitive painter. The late work of Henri Matisse was intuitive.

Happy accidents are trial-without-error because each trial carries a discovery. In this definition, all of science is a happy accident; the accumulated knowledge derived from a mountain of experiments. The same is true in the history of art. “Try it and see what happens” leads to some surprising insights.

What happy-accident-insights can be gleaned from the life-long-experiment asking, “Who am I?” It is never a direct path. It is a circular route with a guide named Intuition who may encourage you to splash paint as a means of self-discovery or might load your bottom line with so much discontent that you move your glass company to Muncie in search of cheaper sand – only to find yourself renowned for a unique shade of blue-green.