Paid memberships are on: let's get started

So, what's the plan?

There just isn’t anything else I want to do than make and talk about art.

Let’s get going. I’ve opened paid subscriptions and am working on the first members-only material. We’ve got 1200 years of sacred art to learn about. No time to lose.

I won!

I couldn’t go back. I did, however, put off starting a long while. Because I came to live here as a British citizen, I didn’t need to do any of it for a long time. But Brexit pushed me forward. I knew I wasn’t leaving, so I had to figure out how to stay.

A few weeks ago I reached something of a milestone in life, especially in the work I’m doing and intending to do; I finished the process to get my Italian national ID card. An Anglosassone won’t understand why this was such a big deal. This is because in AngloLand we have systems that actually function, more or less. But if you’ve lived in Italy for even a short time, you will get it: Italian bureaucracy. It doesn’t work so much as catch you up in a web of apparently endless, insoluble misery. If you’ve read Kafka, you might understand.

When making a living depends on getting the right piece of paper from the local municipality.

I won’t revisit the details - which you might not even believe, so bizarre was some of it - but I’ll say it took nearly three years. I wasn’t procrastinating. And under Italian rules, I couldn’t open an Italian bank account until I had the ID card. And I couldn’t use Stripe - which is the only online payment system Substack uses, until I had an Italian bank account. So today I am happier than might be normally expected in Anglo-Land to announce that I have accomplished all the above, and have, at last, been able to open paid subscriptions on this publication.

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Here’s my plan: learn with me

Substack is very helpful about giving advice on how to make a publication work, and they say you need a clearly drawn-up plan in place when you get started having paid subscriptions. Which I did… kind of. The plan, or the idea at least, is to allow other people to join me in exploring the fascinating, beautiful and uplifting things I’m learning.

I’ve said before that I don’t really consider myself an “artist”. I really have no idea what the word means and I think we have a culturally and philosophically skewed idea about what “art” is. But I think it’s safe to say I’m a student of art, and driven to learn all I can and the more I learn the more I want to share it with someone. If you love something, you naturally want to share it. Enthusiasm is no fun when it’s just you by yourself.

I’ve had a lot of people ask me how they can learn more about the things I’m studying and writing about. It just seems like a natural development to start organising the writing into a systemised outline and start offering it to people interested in going deeper. So the idea for a course was conceived as a way of sharing it all. I floated the idea last year to some home schooling people on Facebook and elsewhere and there was such an enthusiastic cheer I started working on it. It all hinged on getting my Italian bureaucratic issues sorted, but now we’re finally here and I can really get started on this new phase.

1. Weekly posts on art history, Christianity, aesthetic philosophy and sacred art-related things will continue normally, and remain free for everyone; no new paywall on the stuff you’re already getting.

2. A new sub-section of this publication, Sacred Images Course: 1200 years of Christian Art, where I’ll be developing the course packages, adding supplemental material and doing deeper dives into certain topics that seem to need it, or that you suggest or request. These member-only posts will appear on the Sacred Images section of the site and will only be sent to the email inboxes of paid members, and not to the whole list of free and paid subscribers.

3. The course itself will be available to purchase in sections that I’m calling “Packages,” that will be set up as e-books for sale on my Hilary White; Sacred Art shop. These are aimed at home schooling parents and students, and anyone who wants a more technical and systematic approach to the study of Christian sacred art. The first of these I hope to make available for sale by the end of February this year.

4. Live chats with me and paid members of the Sacred Images club on the Substack home page, so we can share things in real time and talk about stuff.

We’ll follow the curriculum that broadly follows the history of Christian sacred art from the 3rd century to the end of the 14th as I outlined it in the first post of the new Sacred Images section here. These will be packages of written materials, maps, high resolution images, quizzes and suggested fun projects for students available for purchase as PDF ebooks every two months.

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Click here if you’d like to see more of my painting and drawing work. You can also order prints or make a direct donation to support my work through PayPal or Stripe, and even become a monthly patron.

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The sky’s the limit

There’s no end to what we can do with this basic framework. I’m doing some reading right now on how to create podcasts, thinking about who it might be interesting to talk to about what topics. One thing good about my former work; I met a lot of interesting people, and picked up some interview skills. I’m also looking around at what things to buy to create videos, so I can follow in the footsteps of my hero Sir Kenneth Clark and get on a train and go look at the stuff in Italy that’s all around me, and bring you all along.

Fra Angelico frescos from San Marco, Florence. Taken on my trip to Zecchi art supplier last spring. Let's keep doing more of this.

Substack is set up to allow video embeds directly, so no worries about YouTube’s incomprehensible content regulations, and will allow direct downloads of pdfs to be embedded into posts. They have a new podcasting section that allows you to post them directly as well. All that can go right into the Sacred Images section for members.

Among the longest-term goals is to start offering small group classes live, in person, in Narni, where we could go through basic iconographic, canonical drawing methods, draw some icons, eat some Umbrian food and go for little trips around about to look at the local treasures. Maybe. Some day.

In addition to the history and meaning of Christian sacred art, there are other topics of interest. A great many people have asked me to help them work out ways of learning to draw or improving their drawing skills. There are online resources, and we’ll talk about those, but I think it would be fun to do “draw with me” type videos for members so we can all improve our skills together.

Someone else said, “I wish I knew how to look at a work of art in a deeper way, to really understand it.” And this is something else we really need more of. The scrolling habit has stolen the skill of deep, attentive and thoughtful looking at art, and at nature… at real life. Maybe we can help each other break away from some harmful habits we’ve picked up online, relearn some lost skills. I’ve got some articles drafted on these kinds of topics for members that I hope will get a conversation started.

Yes, I’m still a draw-er and painter

Meanwhile, I’m conscious that I’ll have to be greatly modifying the way I organise my time. All this means a lot more focused writing time, which means I’m going to have to be scheduling painting and drawing time as well.

I'm calling him "Jeremiah the Romanesque Prophet". Nitram charcoal on handmade cotton paper.

This kind of thing is what keeps the screen work from melting my brain. And I’ve still got commissions to work on, two right now, and more inquiries coming in.

So I guess I’ll be busy for … the rest of my life…

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I think it’s worth doing

For the first time, maybe in my adult working life, I know for sure that this is something I’m really meant to be doing. That’s a pretty big declaration, I realise, especially since I spent so long doing all manner of sort of “big ticket” things in life that got a lot of attention. But I’ve said before that I was never comfortable with that work. It always seemed wrong somehow, just made me feel off, and this does not. Not a shred.

It’s been a really long road and it seems funny that it has led all the way back to the beginning, back to one of my earliest loves in life; medieval sacred art to which I was introduced in childhood. It seemed to me then, and does now, to hold some kind of secret, mystically coded answer to the great puzzle of life.

I’ve received some criticism recently for turning against the kind of political activism I spent so long engaged in. But for whatever value that kind of work has, I am willing to defend the position that what we’re doing here is the kind of culture-building, soul-restoration, that is of incalculably greater value. I spent a long, long time writing briefs and speeches for politicians and activists, critiquing and analysing legislation, and writing articles about what is wrong with the world, and I think I’ve got an insider’s view of the value of it all, and its limitations.

One thing I know for sure by close observation, we’re in danger of losing the “Culture War” on a much more important front than mere politics. We’re losing touch with the ancient culture in our souls, at least in the Ango-sphere. My interactions with good and well-intentioned people who know next to nothing about any of it, has shown me very clearly that, despite having nearly all human knowledge and artistic endeavours available to us at a click, we are in a strange condition of growing amnesia. We are forgetting that there even was a great Christian civilisation to be explored, or what it was about, how it shaped who we are and our understanding of what life is for.

If we win every political battle but when we’re done no one has any idea what Romanesque frescos mean, what have we really won? The right to continue buying plastic Chinese junk at Walmart?

Thanks everyone who has come along so far. I hope we’ll find great wonders together.

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