Welcome, new people!

A recap of what we're about and how you can help the work

On the easel right now. Nothing glows like real gold! To just be clear that this is the site of a painter who writes, not the other way around.

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This green button will take you to my studio blog, Hilary White; Sacred Art, where you can see a gallery showing my progress learning how to paint in the traditional Byzantine and Italian Gothic styles. It includes a link to my PayPal where you can make a donation or set up a monthly support to become a patron. Many thanks to those who have already contributed.

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Welcome new people!

Since I posted my “Let’s read an icon” post last week, some interesting developments have occurred, one of the upshots of which is this:

A huge jump in a short time for a small site; 238 new people in a week, in fact the biggest single increase since I launched the site in 2021. Given that my subject - What use is Christian sacred art in a non-Christian world? - is on the obscure side and mostly doesn’t involve click-baity politics and polemics, that seems like a pretty good crowd.

In light of this big surge of new subscriptions I thought it would be a good idea to do a welcome post and a recap of what this is about, how this works and where we’re going. I’ve got plans!

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We talk about Christian sacred art, and how it will save the world

That’s it, in a nutshell. As I was starting to write about it more often in threads on Twitter I noticed that the subject was getting some really positive feedback, and seemed pretty popular. I had long ago ceased to be interested enough in politics, ecclesiastical or otherwise, to think about continuing to write about it. Meanwhile people were always asking me when I was going to “start writing again,” since I rather abruptly quit blogging about the pope in 2017.

And it finally got through to me that I’m not the only one who cares about this fascinating and important area of Christian life, one that has been neglected by the Church for a long time.

Orvieto Duomo. From an upcoming post: “What’s the true western sacred art, and why is it Gothic?”

What I really do.

I figured out that it happened when my friend Peter Kwasniewski launched his new Substack and included a linked recommendation to mine. (Properly so, since it was me that talked him into doing it.) It also happened to be the same day Substack launched its new Notes feature, which is a kind of backstage pass where all the Substack writers talk to each other, a bit like Twitter only without all the idiocy.

I think the way Substack is developing it’s going to be possible to move forward with a bunch of ideas mainly on this site, an all-in-one approach. That means going from just written articles to developing online classes and short courses and other things as I originally hoped to do.

So, in short, things seem to be moving along and I’m really glad to welcome a bunch of new friends.

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Why Substack works: everyone’s fed up with the coercion of The Algorithm

When tech billionaires start talking about the “Everything App” people are learning to ask how much coercion is going to be involved. The internet in general and social media in particular is coming to understand the problem of the Algorithm and the unnatural power it has over our lives and minds and privacy. And this is the big draw of Substack, since it is a user-controlled newsletter, where subscribers pay the writer directly, there are no advertisers looking for a way to muscle in on the action and compete for attention.

Substack is poking a big stick into the prying eye of Big Brother. You can read about how it’s making the big tech giants uncomfortable here:

Enough to say here that at the exact moment the public has finally started becoming more sceptical of “legacy” information services (being exposed right now as having knowingly distributed false information through the whole Covid fiasco), Substack plonks itself down on the sofa, calmly helps itself to a biscuit, looks around with a cheeky grin and says, “Hey, so anyone want to take back control of their lives on the innernet?”

Doing it the 1400s way: a fully rendered value drawing first. Once you start learning how to do it, you understand why it sometimes took the great painters years to produce a piece. It’s definitely “slow art”.

Plans: online classes, mini-documentaries and maybe even podcasts!

And how you can help

Right now commissions for paintings, occasional sales, donations from readers and about 20 monthly subscribing patrons constitutes my entire monthly income of under $1000/month. Over the next few weeks, I’m going to be resolving my long-term and annoying bureaucratic issues with Italy¹ and will think more about how to monetise the site so casual readers can continue to enjoy the posts, while allowing those who want to get more depth to sign up for monthly paid subscriptions.

For various reasons I can't yet monetise the blog directly. It's complicated, and has to do with arcane complications with Italian bureaucracy, and being an ex-pat with a bank account in Canada instead of Italy. I have PayPal, but Substack only uses Stripe. But Stripe can't give me an account attached to my Canadian bank account - the only one I have right now - because my legal residential address is now in Italy. This isn’t a problem for the Toronto Dominion bank, but I can’t attach any other/new online payment system to it - like Stripe - because I no longer have a Canadian address - TD doesn't have any branches in Italy. It means opening an Italian bank account, which is impossible without the Italian ID card, which is proving difficult².

I currently have just under 20 patrons, contributing about $20/month each. The average ratio on Substack of paid supporters to free subscribers seems to be about 1-4%. So I figure I’m doing pretty well, with our obscure little niche interest, at about 1.6%. Assuming that ratio stays steady, I need about 40 more monthly supporters to bring me to the point where I can cover my living expenses, to carry on painting and writing and exploring with freedom from anxiety over mere survival.

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One of the reasons I like Substack is the absence of the Algorithm and their commitment to free speech. So there are no strings attached to subscribing, no one collecting data or listening in. If you can afford $10/month you can become a patron and help me keep working.

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This is why I call the people who donate monthly “Patrons,” since they are fulfilling the role of the great patrons of the Middle Ages who would often sponsor the training/apprenticeship of a promising young person. I’m not very young anymore, but that is very much what I’m doing; learning by doing. I’ve been painting for only 3 years and it’s a pretty steep curve.

So, the plan when the situation is sorted and the site is directly monetised is to have most material - the two weekly posts - remain free for everyone, with particular things that take a lot of extra work - like video documentaries, podcasts, classes and chats - being behind the paywall for subscribers. There are some perks already for monthly patrons. We already have a patrons’-only chat group on Signal that is proving a lively forum of discussion about Christian life, literature, art and spirituality.

14th century frescos at the Spanish Chapel of Santa Maria Novella, Florence. Photo taken by me. A big part of my plans are to take my camera and go look at things like this, and bring patrons along.

If you’re already a patron signed up for a monthly subscription and you’re not in the group yet, you can read about how to do that here:

Friends of Narnia

(We’ve just decided to do a group read-through of the Narnia books, which should be some interesting backing-and-forthing about the nature of grace and sacrificial redemption.)

So, for the new and especially for the free subscribers, I’d like to assure everyone that I’m never going to put it all behind a paywall. I’m still pretty committed to the idea of writing about the niche subject of Christian sacred art through the ages on a donation basis. I’ve found in all these years of blogging that people like to help, and to have something worth supporting.

Here’s the list of drafts in progress for upcoming articles:

So, stick around and we’ll talk about a lot of fun things.

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Thanks for reading to the end. If you would like to help me continue to do this work, you can click on my studio blog, Hilary White; Sacred Art, where you can make a one-off donation or set up monthly support.

Many thanks to all who have contributed to make it possible to keep working - the “struggling artist” thing doesn’t last forever, but it is a struggle for a while. Stay tuned.

1. Read details of it here.

2. For those who have only come to Italy on holiday, it’s a nation of wonderful weather, friendly people, great food and magnificent art and history. For expats it’s all those things, plus the most infuriatingly labyrinthine and obstreperous bureaucracy of any country calling itself part of the developed world. You need superhuman levels of humour, resignation and patience, which are not generally Anglo traits. I’ve been applying British Stoicism, with mixed results.