A note to our many new free subscribers

over 200 per month!

230+/month! That is amazing!

It’s very gratifying to see so many people share an understanding how important this work is and feel an attraction to these beautiful and uplifting works of art.

The little blurb above the subscription button always reads something like: “The Sacred Images Project is a reader-supported publication, which means there’s no annoying ads BUT also no advert revenue to keep the lights on and the kitties fed.”

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But I think maybe people don’t realise that I mean this literally. What I earn on this site, plus monthly donations from patrons and occasional sales of paintings and prints, makes up my entire income, and it amounts to just a hair over $1000/month.

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Feel free to take a browse around my shop by clicking the green button. My personal favourite of the large drawings I’ve made available as prints is this one:

“Crucified”. By me. Graphite on paper in the style of the 13th century Umbrian panel crucifixes.

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If you prefer to set up a monthly patronage, you can do that on the studio blog as well and you will get a free membership here.

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I’m doing this because I think it’s important. Really important.

I feel like we are at a crucial juncture in the western world, as if we are being forced to make a choice between saving our civilisation’s collective soul or watch its utter destruction. And this little website feels like a chance for me to plant my flag, and invite others to stand up for this culture that has been like no other in human history, which we are in danger of losing forever.

But here’s the rub: I can’t live on well-wishes or enthusiasm, or even passion. I’m not married and don’t have a family helping behind the scenes. So this project has been a gamble: can I bring in enough revenue to continue doing the work indefinitely? I’m throwing everything I have into it; all or nothing.

A crucial moment for The Sacred Images Project.

I don’t remember a time when I have enjoyed a work more or been more keen to keep doing it and expanding. When I was a reporter for a Christian online news outlet, I knew what I was doing was useful and at least somewhat important, but it was also deeply fraught. It was, quite simply, depressing, and I was always uneasy about the real effect it was having both on me and the readers; how much good was I actually doing? I was chronicling the downfall of my civilisation, but felt as though I was doing nothing to try to save it, even the little one person could do.

So I did it as long as I had strength, but after the loss of my home in the 2016 earthquake, I had come to the end of that strength. I turned away and started looking for a different path.

And this is it, or so I fervently hope.

In October I wrote:

When we lost Her Majesty, I felt as though it was the final clanging shut of the door to the old world, my old world, the one I’d grown up in and can’t ever get back to. I don’t think any other person in this modern world better exemplified the old idea of vocation than she did. She fulfilled what was thrust upon her with heroic selflessness. One can only hope to do half as well.

I’ve asked myself, What do I want to be doing on my last day? It’s not writing articles about politics. If I don’t have enough to time left to get where I want to be with this work, at least I want to be on the road when the moment comes.

But here’s the problem: I’m just one person doing all of it. A friend comes up from Rome about once a month to drive me to see a church or museum around Umbria and Lazio, and another friend, all the way back in Vancouver, is volunteering to do video editing. At the moment, I am putting in full time hours, 6 days a week, to do the research and writing, and that includes at least a monthly trip to a church or museum to take photos and video footage, edit and write. (As well as learning the technical aspects of doing all these new things.)

And for that, because the growth of paid memberships has been completely stagnant, with almost zero growth through March, it is bringing in less than half what is needed to cover bare monthly expenses. I rely on donations from patrons to make up the rest.

The only way I will be able to keep doing this work, that I think is so important, in the long term, is if I can bring my paid membership up to a minimum 100 from our current 52 in the next few months.

I’ve got until the end of May to achieve this before my living expenses will double.

Now it’s my work, and I’m committed

I launched this idea of writing about Christian sacred art last November, and started including original material like photos and videos of the places I could visit around Italy, with the aim of making these treasures more widely known throughout the English speaking Catholic world.

But I was banking on there being enough interest out there to at least minimally support this work. I’m not seeking riches; just enough to keep doing the work which I think is very important, filling an enormous gap in our beleaguered Christian culture in the west.

The red arrow starts about December 15. This is an incredible and very encouraging growth rate.

But though we have seen very encouraging rapid growth in free subscriptions, for some reason, paid memberships, after an initial burst, have plateaued since the end of February and completely flatlined through March, even though my output has been steady.

The normal rate of growth of paid memberships on Substack is about 3-5%, with 10% considered very good. But the paid membership for The Sacred Images Project has stayed at 2% with 52 members. My goal for sustainable growth, my business plan, is to bring that up to 5%. With about 2500 subscribers overall, that means 125 paid memberships.

I’m certainly not giving up.

I am working on expanding the work in the next few weeks and months. I’ve invested some precious funds in good equipment, especially a professional microphone and data storage, and I’m starting podcast style video interviews next week. I’m working on ebooks on specific topics which will be made available for free to paid members. Free subscribers will have the option of purchasing the ebooks at my shop, Hilary White Sacred Art.

I’ve started creating voiceover audio recordings of my longer articles for paid members so they can listen to them rather than have to sit in front of the screen and read. And as I’ve talked about before, full scale courses in sacred art suitable for homeschooling families are in the works.

But as I mentioned above, there’s only one of me, and without sufficient income it is very difficult to see these ideas coming to fruition.

So, here’s my “ask”: if you are enjoying these posts, and want to see more, would you consider upgrading to paid?

After saying all that, I’d like to also thank all the people who have become paid members already, and who have signed up for monthly patronages at the studio blog, who have encouraged me, given me useful business advice, bucked me up when I’ve been down, bought my prints and Christmas things, commissioned paintings and helped buy me critical equipment like the big easel, the high resolution scanner and all sorts of art supplies.

And I am always chuffed and grateful to hear from readers who leave comments and drop me emails. The other day someone asked me for advice on finding an online drawing class, and I felt like I had beaten back the orcs at Helm’s Deep.

We’re in a war against the forces of an unspeakable darkness. And I’m very glad I’m not in it alone.

Thanks for everything,

Hilary