It is raining outside and I haven’t done at all as much as I’d hoped today, so I’m growing a bit panicky. It’s coming on dinner time, so the dogs are getting restless. Four of them. Four dogs. Each with his or her own neuroses, quirks, needs, foods, and medications. When I went to select a furry companion, I picked a shed-less, purse-sized miniature shih-tzu and I trained her impeccably to fit my lifestyle and to not bark in restaurants. Then she got sick, and spoiled, and now she’s better and she barks in restaurants. The others were never really trained to begin with, for various historical reasons, and so there’s rarely a quiet moment in the house, unless we turn on the gas fireplace for them [— just got up to turn on the fireplace for them —], and that’s not counting the incessantly screech-barking golden retrievers next door.

Most people, it seems, have a certain allowance for disturbances from the outside world. I, however, have none at all, and the older I get them more sensitive I become. From the moment I wake up, the day becomes a series of what are known to “highly sensitive people” as “tolerations”. I wish it were otherwise, but it’s not, and it feels like to begin to get on top of it I just need some blessed hours and days of peace in order to repair from the tragedies of last year (and, let’s face it, all the years before), and grow myself back together [ — can’t think at all with two dogs milling about the house — ].

And it’s not just the disturbances themselves: it’s the very thought that I might be disturbed that keeps me from settling into that beautiful, timeless creative space, that wonderful identity-less flow [ — Screeeeech of dryer filter being pulled out by a lovely husband who’s doing a load of wash and now is just asking if he can do a load of laundry for me, so I’ll get up and help sort laundry :) ]. You’re thinking: try again, try harder. I have! I can’t. I’m all spent up.

Throughout the years, I’ve lived in spaces just large enough for a shih-tzu, a tea kettle, a bathtub (although not always), a great load of books, and myself. And then, obviously, I’ve overstuffed each little chambre de bonne or flat with antiques…but they were still manageable. And cozy. And my own. Lyon. Paris. London. New Haven. San Francisco. West Hollywood. St. Helena. And now here I am, in a much larger house that was my mother’s, and it’s not just filled with dogs and antiques and noises and washing machines and exceptionally loud doors, but it’s also loud with memories, and my head is as full of ghosts as the rooms are, and I have trouble thinking my thoughts from one end to the other.

So for the new year, I’ve come up with a plan: claim a room of my own. It’s going to be the little shed-store room, outside, always a bit damp, and currently packed tight with toys, family photos, vintage clothes, and of course art supplies. It’s a long-shot. But I’m persistent, stubborn, and desperate.

And I have help. As I’ve been writing here, Mike has been cleaning up some of the antiques, and the most romantic and interesting of them I’ll make available from time to time. I’d like to keep them all since I’m overly sentimental about just about everything, but it’s time to [— trash compactor! —] move my work outside into the shed.

Please let me know if you’re equally as introverted and have as difficult a time with disturbances as I do so I don’t feel quite so abnormal. (If you don’t have any trouble whatsoever and can listen to music and the T.V. while having a conversation with multiple people on a busy street, I’m very happy for you but it’s not polite to brag about such superpowers. ;)

Also please let me know if you have any coping strategies that work for you? I’d love to hear about them.

And also please let those of your friends who are antiques-minded know to head over to my Instagram stories to see if there’s anything currently irresistible on offer. That would help enormously!

When the house is very still and quiet, as it is now with the dogs sleeping and Mike away with his family, I can hear the clear chime of her voice calling me over to have a seat and tell her what’s new, or comforting me with those encouraging phrases that only mothers truly believe. She would say “Ta” for thank you, because she picked it up when we lived in England and it reminded her of our best years together there. She’d call up and ask about upcoming estate sales and say “Let’s go play” to go shopping or out to lunch to get out of the house.

Although I’m sure “What’ll we have for dinner?” is a question asked in almost every household every day, my mother had a precise way of asking it right in the middle of lunch when thoughts of dinner couldn’t be furthest from one’s mind. We’d laugh about it, but she couldn’t help herself. The next day at lunch, in all seriousness, she’d ask again: “What’ll we have for dinner?”

She couldn’t bring herself to swear, but she would allow herself a “Fiddle Faddle” if the need arose. In the last years she came to be almost blind, but could still see a little, and she’d say “I can’t see” many times a day in frustration as she tried to do something she’d used to be able to do. And a few important times, she would grow contemplative and say with all seriousness, “I’ve had a good life”. And I really hope she did.

I’m sharing these ornaments with you today because I’ve come to realize just how many of you are going through hard times and are deeply missing someone. Sometimes it’s just nice to know someone else is missing someone too. And sometimes it’s helpful to see how others are processing their grief…

Although if I’m going to be completely honest, I’m doing a bad job of it. My mother was the one who would comfort me in times like this, and telling myself what she would have told me (“Why don’t you go take a hot bath and go to bed early? You’ll feel better in the morning…”) doesn’t have the same impact. Perhaps these ornaments are a way of being able to hear her say them again? And so maybe I’ll listen and actually decide what to defrost for dinner before 9 o’clock at night, and go to bed before 2 o’clock in the morning, and stop overworking, and take a minute to go play, and at the end of it all be able to say, “I’ve had a good life,” too.

If reading what my mother used to say has reminded you of what your mother used to say, or still does say, or the phrases of another loved one of yours, then there are many ways for you to make ornaments like these at home in time for Christmas (although ornaments like these are of course not limited to Christmas).

I’ve done these as part of teaching myself ceramics, and this batch has a variety of experiments (some more successful than others) with new clay, slip, stains, and sgraffito. If you don’t have access to clay and a kiln, though, there are easy alternatives. A local craft store might still have blank ornaments you could write on with ceramic pens. Or, you could simply cut out cardboard in any shape you like and decorate with gel pens and colored pencils. A third option is to pick up some polymer clay or air-dry clay and a little stamp set.

And a fourth, related easy project is to make a paper chain of colorful paper with quotations written inside: you might write sayings from all the people you’ve loved and who have loved you, who are both still in this world and who are waiting in the next. It might be a great big tear-jerker of a project, but the best heirlooms put us through the emotional wringer, don’t they?

We aren’t a messy household, but there is certainly a surfeit of dog beds, in addition to plush oriental rugs near the fireplace, hardwood floors with their sunny parallelograms, chilled marble tiles in the bathrooms, flagstones baking outside in the sun, and lounge chairs with cushions that the dogs aren’t supposed to jump up on…which means that of course they jump up on them all the time. You would think we had narcoleptic dogs, but really we’re just pushovers. My husband has two larger dogs. My mother had a King Charles, which we have just inherited. And I have my little plucky miniature shih-tzu, Agatha.

She was not in the little princess bed here by my desk. She was not in the kitchen dog beds. She as not trapped in the laundry room. Or the pantry. She was not on the rug by the fire. She was not tangled in the drop cloths draped and puddled all over the living room (another story). She was not inside. She was not outside.

I called her name in rising degrees of urgency, while trying to sound welcoming and fun so she wouldn’t think she was in trouble and hide. I phoned my husband to see if he knew where she might be. I ran around the outside of the house, and I ran around the inside of the house, and then I did both again, and then I ran upstairs and found, in the bedroom, a little shih-tzu looking at me with eyes heavy from her morning nap, and wearing an expression that she has only worn once or twice in her usually oblivious, disinterested, and adorably unempathetic little life: “Mom, are you okay?”

(You will think: why didn’t you check upstairs first? Agatha has been weak for a few years from a bad blood disease and the meds that go with it, so I carry her everywhere. Everywhere. She has trouble with curbs. I have no idea how she made it all the way up the stairs.)

So I scooped her and held her tight and I thought, “I’m okay now,” and I also thought, “No, I’m not okay.”

My mother, you see, is nowhere in the house. It’s her house, and she’s not here. I’ve been everywhere, and I can’t find her. I’ve organized the pantry, and the laundry room. I’ve gone all around the gardens, checked in the old pump house overgrown with jasmine, peeked around to the alley behind the garage. I’ve looked in closets, under beds. I’ve quietly opened the door to her bedroom in case she’s still sleeping, and then I’ve quietly shut it behind me, so as not to disturb anything for when she comes back. But she’s just not here.

I go to tell her things, like that the fridge is leaking again, or that Lucy has finally learned to go potty outside instead of on the Oriental rugs, or that Mike has learned how to prune the roses. I want to tell her who was at the funeral, and how lovely the ceremony was. I want to ask her where such-and-such a photo was taken, or whatever happened to so-and-so.

Most of all, I want her to pat my hand when I’m feeling sad for whatever reason and say what she would always say (no matter what happened), “You have everything going for you,” and (no matter how old), “You have your whole life ahead of you.” But hearing it in my head isn’t the same thing as hearing her say it, with conviction, out loud. It all happened so quickly, and we weren’t really able to say a proper goodbye, which was good for her, but it has left me….here. And I can’t just go all the way upstairs to find her. At least not yet.

So I’m feeling very sorry for myself. And more than that, I’m feeling sorry for her, that she had to go through so much, and that she can’t be here to give Lucy a treat when she wiggles proudly back to the house, or smell the roses that have burst forth in a riot after such a long winter. She would have loved this beautiful summer, and the beauty of it just makes my heart ache all the more.

When things got tough for her, she would focus on the small things: a cup of coffee in the morning, sitting outside in the sun.

I’m trying to do the same. A cup of iced tea with a sprig of mint. A bubble bath and a good book. Bouquets of roses brought inside. Chocolate chip cookies fresh from the oven. Books shelved in chronological order. Meticulously organized cabinets. Painting in the soft morning light. And most importantly, dressing up little dogs in ruffled collars…..

Of course, losing parents is “common”, and I always think of Hamlet, “But you must know your father lost a father. That father lost, lost his.” But it never seems common, does it? I’m just writing this to somehow connect with those of you who have lost loved ones too, and to say: I’m so sorry.

Oh, and here is Agatha, back to being completely and beautifully oblivious (until dinner, of course!)….

1. “There are as many forms of love as there are moments in time,” as Edmund Bertram remarks in Jane Austen’s Mansfield Park. Forget for a moment that Edmund is attempting to rationalize his infatuation with the morally shallow but alluring rival to our heroine, Fanny, and just take the dictum at face value. Call it Galentine’s Day if you will, but keep in mind that romantic love is just one of MANY forms of love (don’t forget your dog, or cat), and there’s no hierarchy or judgment when it comes to love.

2. If you are looking for romantic love, then please remember that you are not too old and that it is never too late. My mother fell in love again at 70 with a gentleman who was 89 at the time, which was fully 19 years older. Not only that, but they had 18 years together before he passed away last year at the grand old age of 107. As for me, I found the love of my life at long last in the realm of what is vaguely and respectfully called “a woman of a certain age”, but at which age precisely I will not disclose for the sake of vanity. And my husband was three years older. So, it’s not too late.

3. Never give up hope. This is Constance, whose full title is, in fact, “Constance Never Gave Up Hope,” inspired by the quiet patience of Anne Elliot, heroine of another Jane Austen novel, Persuasion, as well as by the steely and hopeful determination driving Jane Eyre as well as many of Shakespeare’s Sonnets.

   She’s a Valentine’s Day card gift for you, so please right click the image, download, print on heavy-ish paper, write lovely things inside, and give the card to all your favorite people, and together let’s blanket the world with all sorts of love as best we can!

   Also available here. And the original is available here.

   Enjoy!

   

   Thanks for reading The Storied Life! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

I used to have boring white index cards, but I didn’t like the ugly reality of being under near-constant threat, so I made them as pretty as I could. It seems superficial, I know, but after a certain age you start to realize that the dangers and disasters aren’t going to stop comin’ at ya, and while there will be those regrettable, inevitable tragic moments, the baseline, the everyday, the by-far-greater-majority of the time needs to be the genre of your choosing. Personally, I prefer a mix of high-comedy Jane Austen and romantic-comedy Nora Ephron, at least as much as possible.

These cards have a note of Austen’s juvenilia, “Love & Freindship” [sic.], which includes a number of flights and escapes and is perhaps most notable for the line, “Run mad as often as you chuse, but do not faint.”

But again, just because I’ve written “FLEE!” in pretty lettering, please don’t think I’m taking any of the fires less than completely seriously. Our old family home which my parents had built and in which I grew up was burned in 2018; and for a couple of days I was sure I’d lost my house here before I found out the fire had burned most of the trees but had stopped at the water line - on the front steps (see below).

I know that shocked feeling of loss, and I’ve lived in a ghost landscape for several years now - at first blanketed in white like snow, and then blackened like a nightmare, with that particular smell of smoke stuck to everything. And then the endless paperwork, and the heavy expenses that the insurance companies don’t pay for. And every year, as soon as the sun comes back out, I’m on constant alert for sirens and wisps of smoke in the air. All clouds on the horizon are suspicious. All neighboring barbecues are cause for alarm. All summer lightening storms require staying up all night, vigilantly peeking out the window every few minutes.

So believe me: I’m not really romanticizing it. I’m just trying to get by.

The cards inside are steps in order or importance, because even though I know exactly what needs to be done now, in a panic at 5:15 am with smoke in the air, a glow out the window, the power cut off, and no lights, my brain starts frizzing out.

The first card has listed:

1. Determine risk.
2. Turn on roof sprinkler (the longer the sprinkler is on, the better. Turn it on manually if you can. But also invest in a smart system so you can turn it on from anywhere (if the power is on). Also, hook it up with metal hoses so they don’t melt.

3. Take a video of the contents of the house, including closets and drawers and anything important. This is for the insurance claim. (You can do this one now.)
4. Pack.
5. Close windows.
6. Remove tinder from the porch - anything, like boxes waiting to go out to the recycling, which are easy to light.
7. Check the Blink cameras. These are for seeing as much as I can about a fire’s progress while the power is still on.
8. Set the house alarm.
9. Lock the door.

The second card has all the Essentials. Obviously, I'm not going to forget my dog, Agatha, but for some reason I feel better knowing she's at the top of the list.

I keep all my family heirlooms that have no monetary value but are completely irreplaceable (e.g., the Christmas stocking my grandmother knitted when I was born) in vintage suitcases, which I can access easily in my closet. Make sure the suitcases are not too heavy and that the handles hold, leather especially.

The next cards are the things I would want to take with me, in order of importance. Sometimes you have an hour to evacuate; sometimes you have 5 minutes. I find it good to have an expandable list of priorities.

I also make sure I have plenty of bags and baskets on hand. My extra-large French market basket is perfect: I can throw things in it and it stays open, but I also easily can swing the handles over my shoulder.

Other safety measures include: making sure smoke detectors are working, having a fire extinguisher, having mini fire extinguisher cans in the kitchen and near work areas where things spark, cleaning out gutters, raking leaves, having your neighbors on your favorites list so if they call in the middle of the night and your phone is on silent mode it will ring through, and having a back-up generator to make sure any remote watering systems and camera systems stay up and running as long as possible.

I often think longingly of the times I lived in big cities and college towns where there were no fire threats, at least not like these, and I conclude that I should probably move somewhere else…but I grew up in these hills and I love them.

If you’re feeling rooted in a risky spot like I am, then I hope these notes help. If you have any more tips, please let me know in the comments!

My father accumulated an impressive list of accomplishments, even though he died at a relatively early age. For me, though, he was the doctor who set all the bones of my childhood friends, who attempted to operate on my pet mouse, who came home late to dinner, who wore a cowboy hat and named all his dogs “Sam” after the dog in a John Wayne movie, who smoked a pipe, who raced wooden Chriscraft motorboats in the summer, and who rescued me on ski slopes in the winter.

Also on the first of this year, I decided to (finally) put together a Birthday Calendar: one of those perpetual calendars that has the days of the month in a list and unassociated with particular days of the week, so that you can keep track of the birthdays and other important recurring dates, such as anniversaries and pet adoptions, from year to year.

But I had the thought of adding in some of my favorite authors and artists, too. So I added in a few of those, and then I felt sorry for the months that didn’t have a birthday on them, so I kept looking and looking and looking until I had filled 366 days with birthdays, and sometimes more than one.

I found myself thinking of all the books I’ve ever read, and all the philosophers who influenced my early thinking, and all the topics I studied at all the grad schools I attended, and all the authors from my dissertation on the origins of the novel. And I thought of favorite poets, and inspiring artists, and difficult literary critics, and sophisticated actors, and children’s book authors, and Golden Age illustrators, and glamorous fashion designers, and French pochoir fashion plate illustrators. And then I added in some of the lovely people I’ve had the pleasure to work with on my books.

And as I was scrolling through lists, and wikipedia, and databases of artists and authors, and genealogies of kings and queens, as well as rummaging around through the vast, messy room of my memory, I became entirely and utterly overwhelmed. Inspired, of course, but overwhelmed.

Of course, I also found myself sifting through lists of people of remarkable accomplishments in fields I know nothing about, such as cricket and banking and physics, and although I skimmed over them as much as I could, the sheer volume of them added to the overwhelm of all the accomplishments in the great sea of human history and advancement.

I’ve come to three conclusions.

1. Humans really are remarkable.

2. Culture really is degrading quickly.

3. I really do have no idea what I’m doing with my life.

For the time being, for a variety of life exigencies, I do not have the luxury of setting a New Year’s resolution to the tune of reading longer, more serious novels and learning to paint just like the masters (both of which I fully intend to at least attempt to do!). There is simply no time to work on plumping up my official C.V., and so I’m feeling more than a bit stymied. No, no, there are caretaking needs that must be met first: and of course there have been fewer women in the history books and on my Birthday Calendar, in part because of the same reasons.

I am trying to be patient, and I am trying to remember that, like a yummy cassoulet, it all goes into the pot. All the novels, all the courses, all the museums, and all the travels; and, just as much, all the heartbreaks, all the victories, all the loves, and all the sacrifices.

And I am trying to remember that even when we’re not heading straight towards an important goal, we’re still adding to the recipe.

And I am trying to remember that even though such Who’s-Who lists reduce these historical figures as Michel de Montaigne (February 28, 1533), French Renaissance philosopher, author of Les Essais; and Etienne de la Boetie (November 1, 1530), magistrate, classicist, poet; the really important part was, for them, in their friendship. After La Boetie died young, Montaigne penned “De l’amitie”, in which he puts together the most beautiful line captured in, I think, any language, on why their friendship affected him so deeply: “Parce que c’estoit luy; parce que c’estoit moy” (a little difficult to capture: “Because it was he, and because it was me”).

And so, I suppose that this year, while I might not be able to add as much as I’d like to my official C.V., I won’t be able to avoid adding to the other, the (Real) Curriculum Vitae: the real relationships, the real emotions, and the real memories, like standing stranded on a snowy mountain with my skis crossed as my father swoops down to take me back to safety and hot chocolate.

I don’t have the answers. Maybe you do. (Do you?) All I know, for the moment, is that somehow it all goes into the total life tally.

Oh! And here’s the Birthday Calendar! At least I’ve completed that!

But here I am, and it looks like this to-and-fro between houses will be permanent, and while it sounds good to have two art studios, it’s in fact much less glamorous and the days are peppered with me grumbling “Oh not again, I brought my paints but I forgot my paintbrushes” and my lovely husband, Mike, who handles inventory and packaging, grumbling, “Oh not again, the tape was just delivered and it’s waiting on the steps - at home!”

So I’ve been doing some midnight shopping, and I thought I’d share my must-haves. A little while ago I shared by favorite bargain buys and my favorite splurges, but now I’m going to share the absolutely-can’t-live-withouts. Some of these are for traveling, and some for doubling up on. No affiliate links, just trying to be helpful!

1. Cotton Gauze Cloths

   I get them from AliExpress, and they have a beautiful feel to them and gorgeous, subtle hues….until I get paint all over them. Choose the palette combo you like best:

   

2. Pocket Calendar

   Do you remember the days of agenda binders? These were before those: the size of a checkbook, one fits easily in my purse, even when my purse has a shih-tzu in it. My husband will say: put all your appointments on your phone! As someone who is usually encouraging him to turn to tech more, it’s hypocritical that I then wrinkle my nose and refuse to figure out the calendar on my phone. In the first place, I don’t like all the typos of phone typing; in the second place, I need to visually plan things out at the risk of double booking. So, although last year I had a large, pretty John Derian wall calendar for my infrequent date scribblings, this year I’m in two places and I have four lives to keep track of (including the shih-tzu), so I’ve just gone old school and bought this very boring (black) pocket calendar, and I love it :

   

3. Palette Paper

   It’s not expensive in terms of money, but it’s expensive in terms of guilt. I feel terrible using disposable paper. But it’s So. Much. Easier. I was excited to find this smaller version of 5”x7”, which is perfect since I usually paint miniatures:

   

4. Smartphone Tripod

   In the splurges piece you’ll see the Canvas phone and light ring gooseneck with the marble base which really can’t be beat and is worth the investment, but this little one is good for traveling and is only $7.12:

   

5. Camera Bag

   Just bought this, again from AliExpress. They have camera bags of all sizes, for all types of cameras. Take a look around and find the camera bag that’s just perfect for your camera and all your accessories. I had a smaller one, but I needed a bit more space for recent add-ons and this one is perfect:

   

6. Laptop Bag

   Same: I had a smaller one, and I’ve just bought this one, which has space for cables, hard drives, and extra files and papers. It’s perfect for back-and-forths:

   

7. Chelsea Classical Studio Lavender and Olive Oil Brush Soap

   This soap is so special I’m talking about it again. I’ve been making do with solvent and dish soap to clean my brushes, but the brushes are getting dry and they asked me especially to reorder, so now I’ll have a little bar in both places:

   

   Speaking of washing brushes….

8. Delta Touch Faucet

   I finally decided to replace my kitchen faucet which had been leaking for years, and I discovered that there are such things as “touch” and “touchless” faucets. Well, I tried a couple of models of the touchless first, and they didn’t work at all, and then I tried - to Mike’s dismay - two versions of the touch, and I was - to Mike’s relief - finally satisfied with faucet installation No. 4, the Delta touch faucet.

   Of course, he thought it was unnecessary and even ridiculous. I thought it was indulgent too, but I was motivated by the desire to do away with hard water stains on the top of the sink. We laughed at the touch faucet for a good day and a half before we immediately grew so accustomed to it that it seemed like we had never had any other kind of faucet ever before. And now, at my mother’s we find ourselves tapping her faucet and staring at it impatiently, oh, like, fifty times a day, before we realize that she has the regular kind of faucet, which we now consider completely archaic.

   What does this have to do with art? Paint-splattered, glue-sticky, gesso-dripping hands, of course!

   

   These range from about $150 to $700, and I’ve just ordered her the cheaper on the spectrum. Mike will be a Very Good Sport about installing (for various reasons) his eighth faucet since the summer, given that he’s as persuaded as I am that the touch faucet is one of the most wonderful inventions of 21st-century life. (And it saves water, too!)

9. Noise-Cancelling Headphones

   My mother, God bless her, listens to the TV on volume 100 all day whilst off-and-on napping. This means that, with the open floor plan, the entire house is flooded with aggressive sound. And it also means that, simultaneously, one is not allowed to make any sound oneself and Mike and I have to walk around on tiptoes in the middle of the day. Oh, and I should mention that when her otherwise adorable King Charles Spaniel, Lucy, is startled, she barks her little head off.

   Since I’m one of those people who is, frustratingly, EXTREMELY sensitive to sensory data, I’ve been going batsh*t crazy. So I dug out my old noise cancelling headphones and hugged them to me tightly in thanks and salvation, even though they only sort of work. Mike looked at me, or rather my headphones, with envy and longing. He’s a bit more stalwart than I am when it comes to sensory data, so now he gets those, and I'm upgrading to the Sony WH-1000XM5s, which are supposed to have the best noise cancellation on the market. If they work, they will be worth every penny of their $300 and I will never take them off. I’ll let you know how they do.

   For now, I just wanted to remind you about noise-cancelling headphones in general, in case they could ameliorate your situation. :)

   

   I’ve also doubled up on paint, brushes, Gamsol, gesso, phone chargers, and internet speed, and Mike has doubled up on boxes, bubble wrap, tape, packing labels, and our thermal label printer (also worth it, if you don’t have one yet). We are both figuring out how to double up on sanity, patience, and time, but neither can be purchased directly so we’re doing out best with what we’ve got!

   Let me know if you have any suggestions from your own list of must-haves!

   Thanks for reading The Storied Life! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

Life is never as it seems, is it?

We all have an excess of drama and the last thing we need is to hear more of someone else’s, so let me just note that we’re at my mother’s house on an unplanned stay, that the dog has a cone around her head, and that the doors are locked. We are all, at least for the moment, fine, but it took a helluva lot of planning, appointments, paperwork, and discussions to get us here (and we still have to dot the i’s and cross the t’s, etc., etc.).

And so I’ve been stealing precious moments in a little nook of the house, and whenever I can I’ve filtered out the hum of busyness and conversation, and I’ve focused my eyes, and my paintbrush, and it seems my very existence on ovals that are 2” by 2.5”. These blank canvases gradually turn into portraits of heroines with old-fashioned names such as Ottilie and Cordelia and Isadora.

Heroines? Yes, heroines. They are static portraits, to be sure, but these heroines have managed to steal away from their busy lives for a moment of calm to sit for their portraits to be painted. I like to think that the busyness in their lives is more charming than my own, and therein lies the escapism of art.

“Imaginative literature is otherness, and as such alleviates loneliness.” That’s the great Harold Bloom who, as he would have said, had the “poor taste to leave us,” but thankfully he left behind towers of books full of ideas that are at once complex, impactful, dense, and powerfully simple. We feel lonely. So we read books.

As my life has, again as he would say, “oozed” into art, of course I refuse to give up on books, and I’m adamant that this sense of belonging and the imagination should find its way into art too.

Why is modern art so alienating? So abstracted, untethered? Why does it have to be so aggressive, and have an agenda, and take itself so seriously? I suppose there’s a time and a place and a style for that, but there’s certainly no shortage of shock-value, conceptual art in the world.

So I feel free to do the other kind of painting: that which will shock no one, satisfy no art critics, inspire no cultural realignment, and have nothing at all to do with any current political tensions.

Jane Austen described her novels as “The little bit (two inches wide) of ivory on which I work with so fine a brush as produces little effect after much labor,” distinguishing her stories from those of Sir Walter Scott and other authors who referenced the great events of History (capital “H”) such as the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars.

So if novels are miniatures, perhaps miniatures can be at least a little like novels too? “Narrative art” usually refers to a large, epic scene of action in which a historic event is being played out, so I don’t mean it in that sense.

I just paint little snapshots of characters who are full of pluck and gumption, who are afraid of nothing, who meet challenges head-on and are stout of heart, and who inspire us to be the heroines (and heroes) of our own lives too. I don’t mean to say that they’re reminders like grocery lists or strings tied around our wrists, but rather that even if we don’t think about it specifically or articulate is precisely, these portraits look at us from imaginative worlds on the other side of ours, and remind us that our lives are what we make of them.

As I paint, so I collect: my gallery walls - full of both antique and contemporary art - are full of landscapes that lead the way into imaginative vistas and portraits that seem like friends. I would never acquire a painting as an investment: the idea feels very strange, doesn’t it? I buy art that I cannot resist, and invariably I cannot resist it because it grabs me by the collar for a moment and drags me through the frame into its imaginative world for at least a lovely escapist moment or two. And then I pop back into my current reality feeling a little less alone and a little more like life is a story in the making.

So here, in front of the fire, as midnight closes in again, and a day full of frustrations crouches in readiness, I’m prepared to meet the morning as a heroine would: with unreasonable confidence that, even in the worst moments, somehow everything will turn out in the end.

"The short answer," I say, "is, honestly, 'I don't know'. The longer answer has to do with the fact that I love history, and I love stories, and I love the Georgian tradition of painting itty-bitty eyes on ivory and setting them in brooches so that everyone knew you had a lover but no one knew who it was. And I love antiques, and I love orphaned antiques especially, and one day I came across some pretty little saucers when I was looking for some smaller antique frames for the Lover's Eyes I was painting, and my brain is the sort of brain that puts things together, and I thought, 'it wouldn't hurt to try', and so I tried, and I was startlingly pleased with the result, with the saucer bringing the eye to life and the eye giving the saucer new life too...."

And at about this part in the explanation, some of her friends wish they'd never asked, and others of her friends tell me about their mother's antique china.

Now, to be completely honest I cringe at the words "upcycled" and "repurposed" and in general I'm not very interested in craft projects to do with old cups and saucers - pouring candles or planting succulents in them, making lawn totems sculptures by stacking them, etc. I'm sure plenty of it is lovely and done well, but it can also be a bit twee.

But I do love collecting antiques as if they were rescue dogs, and giving them baths and restoring them and tilting my head and looking down at them and asking, "Now, what are we going to do with you?"

My mother always says that one ought to do the minimum when it comes to restoration. She is a retired antique dealer, if one can retire from such a profession. If an antique dealer buys and at least sometimes brings herself to sell antiques, a retired antique dealer just shamelessly buys antiques. But having been in the business for decades, she has come across a wide variety of poor decisions regarding restoration, including the use of glue guns, sharpies, bad varnish, latex paint, shortened table legs, and the like.

There are a few old restoration moments which are acceptable, such as old pottery staples, metal pottery patches, kintsugi, hidden book boxes, adding shelves to cabinets, and the occasional transformation of a vase or figurine into a table lamp.

The charm of these interventions usually comes from their age, e.g., a favorite 18th-century Chinese Export Porcelain saucer was broken by a clumsy suitor come to tea in the 19th-century and taken to a repair shop, where metal staples were carefully inserted to put the saucer back together. If an unread liturgical treatise of 1735 was carved out and used to hide a pack of cards or pound notes in 1785, then the sin against the book was absolved long ago; carve out a 300-year-old book today and it’s sacrilegious!

Newer restorations, when necessary, must be perfect or they lack all charm. My mother once had a family house sit while we went to France, and their cat ran mad around the house and broke one of a pair of early Delft polychrome cows. The woman had the tact (and money) to take the tiny pieces of the cow to a repair shop, where it was meticulously reassembled and refired, and now the untrained eye couldn’t tell the difference between the two cows.

I’ve gone a bit off-track, but all this is to say that I’ve been conscious my whole life of the very delicate poetic balance of what to do about broken old things in the modern world.

So while I love the goal of attempting to make what would be, at worst, discarded or, at best, mediocre antiques exceptional, at the same time I’m constantly flooded with the guilt of having interfered with them too much, as well as the anxiety of having possibly tipped over into tweeness myself. One can’t really be serious about painting portraits on old plates, so I find myself leaning in to that sense of “why not?” and “what next?” and “what if?” with portraits heroines that live within the romantical, imaginary wreaths of the borders. “Life” – and art too, I would add to Oscar Wilde’s quip – “is much too important to be taken seriously.”

Do my paintings work? Well, I hope they do, at least some of them; and when I know they don’t work I soak them and scrub them off. So while the paintings can be preserved and maintained if desired, they can also be ctrl-z’ed as if they never existed, and the antiques can go back to being what they were before. Perhaps they’re just a chapter in the life of these antiques that have lived for decades and centuries before us, and will go on to have other lives and meanings and metamorphoses after us too.

The iconic nature of these portraits is no doubt in part due to the wonderfully extravagant but perfectly balanced silhouettes of mid-17th-century Spanish court fashions, which are at once richly sumptuous and substantial, and yet almost confectionery in their soft colors and sparkling metallic embellishments. We usually think of 18th-century France when we see paniers wide enough to necessitate the broadening of doorways, but here they are a century earlier. The charm of the portraits, especially those of the young princesses (although the Queen herself was herself a young woman of 18 or 19 in her portrait), comes from the contrast between their doll-like complexions and childlike frames, weighted down by both layers of lace and fabric and layers of responsibility and expectation.

The elder sister, Maria Theresa, went on to marry her double first cousin, the great Sun King, Louis XIV of France, and became the matriarch of the Bourbon Dynasty which eventually inherited the seat of Spain as well. The younger sister, Margarita, went on to marry her uncle, the Holy Roman Emperor, Leopold I, and sadly died at the age of 21 after 6 pregnancies in 6 years.

Here is Velasquez’s most famous painting, Las Meninas, with the Infanta Margarita glowing with childlike innocence and future hope from the light falling upon her. The artist himself is “in charge” of the scene, as it were, standing to the left in front of the canvas he’s painting of the Infanta’s parents, King Philip IV and Queen Mariana, who are reflected in the mirror at the back of the room, and would be standing where we, the viewers, stand. It’s an exact behind-the-scenes reversal of an official regal “swagger” portrait, with instead an informal collection of court attendants, dwarves, and a dog.

Pablo Picasso (1881-1973) was fascinated with Las Meninas and painted 45 variations of it in 1957, in part as an artistic obsession, and in part as a political statement against Spain’s continued captivity of Republicans captured during the civil war.

I don’t fully understand Picasso’s politics or abstractions, but I do understand his passion for the painting. Over the years, there have been countless interpretations of the Infantas: here are my three favorites. Rather than emphasizing the disorder and violence of Spanish history, they create magic in an alternate world with undertones of majesty and hints of tragedy.

1. Igor & Marina (Igor Kozlovsky (b. 1956) and Marina Sharapova (b. 1960), St. Petersburg, Russia).

1. Manolo Valdes (b. 1942, Valencia, Spain)

1. Anne Siems (Berlin, Germany)

I’ve been enchanted for years by the stories of the Infantas, and although I’ve painted miniature portrait plates…

…I’ve been wanting to try to capture some of the innocence and charm in a casual, contemporary style. The paintings are on a small scale - sketches, really - as I work out ideas for more monumental sizes, with a calm, muted palette, subtle but bold silhouettes, and an almost sculptural quality.

I’ve read that Velasquez had a “conception according to which every object or being is an actor in the ‘theater of the world,’ as Calderon put it. Everyone’s identity must be preserved, in artistic form, in a choral series of ‘portraits’ that make up the infinitely animated universe.” (Prado Madrid, 1968).

For me, this style is my way of abstracting the Infantas from their historical settings and turning them into imaginary characters that we can all relate to on something like a storybook level. Although the style pares them down, it still maintains the essence of their fresh faces, their commanding poise, and the notion that we must all face our destinies head-on, even in a world that at times demands everything from us.

As you know, I love stories that come with art and art that comes with stories, and this is an easy-to-do DIY for one of the best pieces of story-art that ever was.

Towards the beginning of the film, our hero, George Emerson, meets our heroine, Lucy Honeychurch. They exchange quizzical glances across the dinner table at the pensione where all the English guests are discussing their experiences of Florence, and at one point George forms a question mark with the food on his plate and tilts it towards Lucy. Upon overhearing Lucy and Charlotte complain that their rooms do not have views of the river, George’s father declares that they will switch rooms so the ladies might have the view. After much drama and debate concerning the propriety of accepting, the ladies do accept the kind offer and move into the new rooms.

George then abruptly reenters the rooms, strides past them, and goes to a print on the far wall which has scribbled upon it the same question mark - the Everlasting Why - and turns the print around to its proper side which has a portrait of Arthur Wellesley, the 1st Duke of Wellington. Without saying a word, he makes his exit, leaving Lucy curious and Charlotte perplexed.

What is the Everlasting Why?

Well, of course, it’s THE question, and it’s asked here by E. M. Forster in the tradition of the great writers and philosophers who came before him - Socrates, Shakespeare, Montaigne, Diderot, Voltaire - who were the great thinkers, the great explorers of the self, the great seekers of like minds, and also the great wits of history. But whereas they - E.M. Forster included - expended volumes of writing on the answer, the fictional George Emerson condenses his answer to the Everlasting Why with the Everlasting Yes, shouting his creed from the trees of of the Italian countryside at the top of his lungs: BEAUTY! JOY! LOVE!

To remind yourself of George’s creed and the simple power of love to balance out the despair that lurks in the Everlasting Why, you can easily craft a version of the Wellington Question Mark.

1. Find a frame with a bit of age to it at a thrift store. I chose a smaller version, with the window measuring 6”x8”.

2. Print out the public domain image (below) of the Count d’Orsay’s oil portrait of Arthur Wellesley, the 1st Duc of Wellington; frame the print.

3. Cut out a backing from brown kraft paper or a grocery bag, or you might tea stain some paper. Scribble a question mark. I did mine in heavy pencil and sprayed a quick coat of fixative so it won’t smear, but you could also use pens or paints. Glue or tape the paper to the back of the frame.

4. Find a scrap of old ribbon, or if you’re lucky you’ll have a length of picture hanging chain. I’ve hung mine on ribbon with eyelet screws, but in a pinch you could use staples if they hold securely.

5. Hang your piece one front or back, and enjoy the secret of the other side - and let it remind you to answer the Everlasting Why with your own creed of beauty, joy, and love!

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Now, while I love the idea of “Emily in Paris”, I have to admit that this Netflix show is just too loud for me on all levels. I did enjoy, however, the little glimpses of what it’s like to be an American in Paris: the impatient coin-counting women at the boulangerie counters, the smarmy real estate agents, the dining culture, and the lectures on working to live instead of living to work, not to mention trying to find the lights in the vestibules of old buildings and craving staples from home like barbecue sauce and Oreos.

So I’ve been reliving some of my adventures in Lyon and Paris recently, and I’ve decided to give semi-autobiographical titles to a new, colorful mini collection of portrait plates.

The paintings will go live on my website at noon ET this Sunday, August 25. Check them out if you’re curious to know more about my adventures and mishaps living in France!

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On the complete other side of the spectrum from “Emily in Paris”, I recently picked up a book about the new women movers and shakers in Paris. The book had a surprisingly fierce rhetoric about the need to debunk the myth of the archetypal French female. True, not all of us can or want to model ourselves on the Breton-stripe-wearing, red-lips-bisous-giving, high-heels-over-cobblestones French woman, but I have to admit that I don’t see the need to tear beautiful things down in the name of progress. For centuries, the glorious myth of the intellectual, sophisticated, clever, chic Frenchwoman has uplifted culture both at home and abroad. And I say: take from it what you will to become your own heroine.

It doesn’t have to be perfect. As for me, I’ve had Nutella for breakfast and I’m wearing a Galeries Lafayette blue and white striped top I thrifted that has “Ah Yes!” in puff letters boldly across the front. One of my favorite things about French fashion is when they use English words strangely, so when I came across this top in a thrift store I couldn’t resist it. In terms of French-life goals, we’re working towards Sunday dinners with family and friends…and of course taking the entire month of August off. Wouldn’t that be lovely?

Now that Agatha has (fingers crossed!) recovered from a condition that has kept us close to vets for a couple of years, we’re planning a trip back. In the meantime, I’ll be revisiting the clumsy but magical adventures of the American in Paris in my paintings.

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Lists of must-haves will always be personal, so I encourage you to come up with your own.

But here are 10 of my favorites to give you some ideas…and justification to make some essential investments!

N.B. I actually find that these “splurges” aren’t total luxuries and actually do help save time and earn money in other ways. Except, of course, No. 10.

1. PAINTBRUSHES

I have cheap brushes for some uses, but then there are the brushes that are the extensions of my fingers and they’re absolutely priceless. What are yours? Find them. Buy them. Go to local art supplies and feel the bristles and bend of every single paintbrush in the shop. When you find the right brushes, your painting will immediately level up.

My three favorites are the Princeton Velvetouch Mini Mop 1/8, the Princeton Imperial Round 2/0, and the Kingart Original Gold XS.

My favorite larger brushes came from AliExpress and were cheap, but they no longer make them so I’m in a bit of a panic. I tried everything and eventually bought a set of the top-of-the-line Hamburg brushes but they didn’t work for me and I had to return them. The point is not to splurge on brushes for the sake of spending money, but to splurge if you have to to get the right brush. Sometimes you don’t!

2. PAINTS

A word of friendly but firm advice: DO NOT BUY CHEAP PAINTS! Why? Cheap paints are low on pigment, and you won’t have the coverage, the mixability, and the ability to paint what you have in your head. You’ll assume it’s your fault, throw your paper or canvas into the garbage, pack up your supplies, hide them in a drawer, and never take them out again. Your self-esteem does not need the trial of cheap paints. Sets of these paints look pretty on the shelves. Walk on by. Keep your money in your wallet, and save it for the good stuff.

After that, the choice of which of the good quality paints you choose is personal. My favorite oil paint brands are Old Holland, Sennelier, and occasionally Van Gogh, Rembrandt, Williamsburg, and the very special Rublev. There are some colors I cannot live without, of which some can be by almost any brand (Deep Ultramarine Blue), but others can only be by a specific brand (Old Holland Warm Grey Light):

The standard best-on-the-market for gouache is Holbein, and there are two kinds: the Artist’s can be reconstituted like thick, rich, deep watercolors; the Acryla cannot and are more like opaque, watered-down, matte acrylics.

I love Sennelier for watercolors. They’re made with honey and were used by the Impressionists.

3. WATERCOLOR PAINT TINS

Should you buy watercolor tubes or watercolor pans? Sometimes you want to travel or have access to just a little paint. Sometimes you want fresh paint in a big puddle. The solution? Buy the tubes and then squeeze a little of the paint into tins for easy, quick, and less wasteful access.

You can find these on Amazon. The little paint cubes are magnetic and removable, so you can take them out, clean them, fill them, and reorganize them. I made a paint chart sheet and glued it to the inside of the top cover.

4. CHELSEA CLASSIC STUDIO LAVENDER & OLIVE OIL BRUSH SOAP

It’s smells lovely. It feels lovely. And it works better than the other brush soaps I’ve tried.

5. CANVAS VIDEO PHONE HOLDER

I rarely buy things from pushy Instagram ads, but I bought a couple of cheaper alternatives on Amazon, returned them, and then splurged on the shopcanvas.co device with the adjustable arm, rotating holder, ring light, and weighted marble base. Although I like having done reels, I do not like doing reels, and this reasonably nice-looking contraption makes the set-up as little invasive as possible.

6. CAMERA

Buy a good camera. I bought the Nikon D3500 a few years ago, and I ought to have indulged sooner. By now, there will be better options on the market, so do your research! Balance all-available-options, options-you’ll-actually-use, and price.

You need a good camera for three things:

1. Prints, or at least quality photos for your archives

2. Website general photos

3. Website product photos

Although I use my iPhone for product photos (I was told I could, and I believed it), I’m going to switch to my Nikon. On the one hand, transferring photos will be easier; on the other, editing photos will be trickier. But it will be worth it to capture all the delicate work I put into painting.

Bonus tip: splurge on the good camera, but buy the camera bag on AliExpress!

7. PRINTER

For prints, buy a good printer. I used to have a big beast of an Epson that I couldn’t figure out, and I swapped it for the lovely Canon Image PROGRAF Pro-300.

8. FRAMES

You’ve worked hard on your art: splurge on the right frame! Whether minimalist, maximalist, or just a well-finished edge, be sure to honor your work with exactly what it needs. I can never resist a glorious old gilt-and-plaster frame, and I actually paint my paintings to suit their frames.

9. DESK & CHAIR

Your workspace is your most important splurge, not necessarily in terms of money, but in terms of space and—I hate to use the word, but here it is—vibe.

These are my two work spaces. This is for computer work: an outrageous ormolu thrift store desk I splurged on for several hundred dollars, and the piano bench I’ve had since I was five.

This is for painting: a marble table stolen from my mother’s bedroom, and a second piano bench picked up at an estate sale.

Bonus tip: put felt pads on the bottom of your piano bench to slide it around!

9. ART ASSISTANT

This is Agatha, my plucky art assistant. She is very spoiled, and worth every penny!

Some of us, though, aren’t as big. We’re small. And we’re quiet. And it’s easy to feel that we’re buffeted by the hard facts and circumstances of life. Modern life, especially. I’ve spent the last couple of weeks feeling unimportant and disposable and utterly at the mercy of the faceless companies that rule almost every aspect of life: tech companies, online marketplaces, branchless banks. Even smaller businesses seemed to jump joyfully onto the dog pile. And it seemed that the more I struggled to get out, the more it all just piled on. All this, while my mother was in the hospital and my beloved dog is starting to have trouble seeing. And it’s hot, like, really hot over here in California.

I don’t mean to complain: I just mean to let you know that if you have stuff going on and you’re feeling the same way, then you’re not alone.

I started to feel rather insignificant, like a Fanny Price or an Anne Elliot or a Jane Eyre.

And then I remembered that these drab little wrens are the heroines of their stories too. Maybe they’re not as vivacious as an Emma Woodhouse or as undaunted as Flora Post or as plucky as a Rosalind in the Forest of Arden…but there are many ways to be a heroine.

And all heroines have their challenges in the world around them and their character flaws inside them to overcome, and it just depends on when in the story you catch them. Is it Lucy Honeychurch when she’s so confused she’s managed to mislead even herself?

Is it Olivia in deep mourning, right before she falls head-over-heels in love during the topsy-turvy time of twelfth night?

It’s the timing that matters. All is lost in a romantic comedy, right before the happy-ever-after.

Sometimes I ask myself, “What would Lady Caroline Dester do?” Lady Caroline is one of the heroines of Elizabeth von Arnim’s 1922 The Enchanted April, and she’s quite the opposite of me: effortlessly elegant, serene, almost lethargic, and she faces very little struggle or opposition in the world.

It’s a good reminder, as all “What Would So-and-So Do?” thought experiments are. But of course, it’s not a question of what any of these heroines would do in my stead, but of what I need to do as my own heroine. Which, as you can imagine, is sometimes difficult to step into…

So, my friends, remember to be the heroines and heroes of your own lives. Create a world of wonder around you, in the way that you do best, whether it be through your unique work, or by gardening, or cooking, or decorating your home, or taking care of others, or just by serving up everything you do with an extra scoop of love and with extra magic sprinkles.

One last note to say that the lovely people at Wally marketing are doing something they’re calling the Good Vibes movement campaign, which entails projecting inspirational quotations onto big buildings in Los Angeles and New York. They kindly asked me to contribute a quotation, and so if you live in the selected city you might turn the corner one night soon and be surprised by a big lit up sign directing you to BE YOU LIFE’S HEROINE.

Thanks not only for the experience, Wally, but for popping up and being lovely at one of those moments my plot most needed something simple and wonderful.

Now, the thing with old souls is that we’re not just filled with nostalgia for this life, we’re filled with nostalgia for nothing less than all of history. It’s heavy; it’s a burden; and it’s nothing we can lay down. Harold Bloom once told me with those soulful eyes of his that it seemed to him that he held at least 2000 years of the Jewish race in him. He awoke at dawn every morning, had his gefilte fish, and let the accumulation of a culture’s worth of wisdom pour out from him onto the pages of the green, cloth-bound record books he used for writing. Sterling Professor of the Humanities at Yale University and author of dozens of books, he knew what he was doing and why he was doing it.

It’s not so easy for the rest of us. The world was already underappreciative of melancholy and reflection during his lifetime, and the pace at which modern life is diminishing the role of old souls is startling. Even in academia. Even in the arts.

“The great poems, plays, novels, stories teach us how to go on living, even submerged under forty fathoms of bother and distress. If you live ninety years you will be a battered survivor. Your own mistakes, accidents, failures and otherness beat you down. Rise up at dawn and read something that matters as soon as you can.”

I have this quote by Harold framed and placed by my bed, so that these lines are the “something that matters” I read when I wake up (not at dawn…and no fish for breakfast, thank you). And then I sit down to paint. And I attempt to paint something that matters in the way Harold intended, but it’s of course tricky because it’s not reading and it’s not writing; there are no words used to try to capture that ineffable sense of meaning and mattering.

I feel—perhaps you feel it too, if you’re an old soul—this pull into the past, when books were prettily bound, and furniture was finely crafted, and clothes were few but flattering, and letters were hand-written, and houses had roaring fireplaces, and poetry was memorized, and recipes were handed down, and sweaters were knitted, and hair was braided with ribbons, and marriages were lifelong, and music was nice to listen to, and work was honest, and clocks needed winding, and, most importantly, tea was religiously observed at 4 o’clock. I would like to live like this:

Now, I’m not naive, and I know that there was also sock darning and consumption and entailed estates and social rigidity and an unfortunate lack of ceramic-coated pans, tampons, AC, penicillin, magic erasers, SUVs, refrigeration, etc., etc.

I guess what I’m doing—I guess what matters to me—is to bring some of the good parts of the past with us into the now, to indulge in the nostalgia just enough to remember an old style of meaning and make it modern. Recently, I’ve been painting miniature portraits in a style that’s part old-fashioned and part contemporary, on antique small plates and lost saucers. If you look closely, some of them are wearing miniature portrait and miniature lover’s eye brooches.

The stories of these imaginary painted heroines are hinted at in their titles:

• Jane Secretly Published a Book of Sonnets Under the Pseudonym 'Calliope'

• Apollonia Was Secretly Engaged (and More)

• At That Moment, Veronica Understood Her True Worth

• Of Necessity, Prudence Had Turned Waiting Into an Art

• Bess Once Had Tea with the King

• Clementine Sewed Lines of Verse into the Hems of Her Petticoats

• Gwendolyn Drank Three Cups of Wine Punch, Danced the Waltz Twice, Kissed the Boy Once, and Repented the Next Morning

It’s nowhere near the serious literary criticism I was trained to do, but I found that I needed that lightness, that frivolity, and that modern mood to save me from the persistent melancholy of the old soul.

If you’re an old soul too, let me know in the comments how you indulge it, and how you counterbalance it!

But then, I'd be dismissed and sent to the kitchen, where the current housekeeper would bring out the plastic package of ladyfingers and make tea and pour it into a pretty floral porcelain cup, into which I'd plop sugar cubes and dip the cookies. It was all very Dickensian. Or possibly Proustian. With a touch of Jane Eyre. But definitely from some novel at least a hundred years out-of-date.

Here are Miss Havisham from Great Expectations and Jane Eyre being scolded by Mrs. Reed:

In any case, in due time my grandmother died, and I inherited the Schumann china, and as I was away in college it was stored in the back garage of my mother's antique shop. Then it was stolen (along with the Beatrix Potter figurines, and very much else besides). And I was a little heartbroken, since even though my grandmother had been this strange, distant (but demanding) figure, she'd also sustained her own little kingdom of old-world refinement, decorated with the most beautiful things, and it felt like some of that precious magic had been lost. 

Several months later, my mother was in the next county over on an antiquing expedition, and what did she come across but a full collection of Schumann china! She bought it at a lovely discount with the insurance money, and although we're not entirely sure it was the same china, we've always pretended it is. Why not?

I've recently come across some orphaned saucers with the same pattern, and I've done them up as Lover's Eye plates. 

I guess I've always been overly sentimental and loved rescuing lost things, whether they be orphaned saucers, or forgotten ways of life, or even fading memories of regal grandmothers...

But I am part Scottish, and we can’t help but pinch pennies wherever we can!

Here is a list of 7 items that I’ve been able to source inexpensively, so I can save money here and splurge elsewhere.

(No affiliations, just my favorite sources.)

1. PAINTBRUSHES FROM ALIEXPRESS

https://best.aliexpress.com

For my miniatures, sometimes I paint Lover’s Eyes only a few millimeters wide, and so I need teeeeny tiny paintbrushes. The only problem is that oil paints get into the bristles and frizz them out almost immediately, so they’re single-use. AliExpress is perfect for mini brushes. This lot of 100 is $10.72, with free shipping.

Bonus tip: don’t be overwhelmed by all the tawdry crap on AliExpress. Find something close to what you’re looking for, then go down the rabbit hole of maybe-you’ll-like-this-too, and eventually you’ll find the good stuff.

2. OFFICE SUPPLIES FROM ALIEXPRESS

AliExpress also has a great selection of office supplies. I love their semi-translucent sticky notes in interesting, evocative colors, as well as their calligraphy pens, gold pens, mini cutting pens, labels, etc.

Bonus tip: AliExpress is also good for dog dresses and dog ruffs.

3. SKETCHBOOKS FROM ROSS DRESS-FOR-LESS

Marshall’s and TJ Maxx occasionally have them too, but for some reason the otherwise dingy Ross stores have an art supplies aisle that has a positive glow to it. On the minus side, the sketchbooks usually say silly and redundant things like “SKETCHBOOK” and “CREATE”; but on the plus side, if you thumb through them you can usually find some with lovely heavy paper that are almost gleefully cheap.

Bonus tip: Buy the packs of cheap paintbrushes for gesso, but RESIST the paints themselves. I haven’t bought any yet that don’t have translucent color, and that will convince you that you’re a terrible painter, but in fact it’s just the paint. Your confidence as an artist doesn’t need any blows dealt by cheap paint.

4. EYEGLASSES FROM IZIPIZI

https://www.izipizi.com

With so much tiny painting, I try to take care of my eyes with some readers - but bad readers make me feel old, whereas chic readers make me feel studious and diligent. At $50 a pair, IZIPIZI glasses are not dirt cheap, but they hit the middle between drugstore readers and designer frames.  

5. GIMP FOR PHOTOEDITTING

Photoshop is so much the industry standard that it’s become a verb: “to photoshop”. However, not only did it used to be expensive to purchase, but now it’s expensive to subscribe to!

GIMP is free. I’m no expert, by any means, but they seem fairly equivalent in the basics. And if there’s a learning curve to GIMP, there’s also one to Photoshop, and GIMP has plenty of open source techies and users with tutorials and tips. I’ve been using GIMP for years, and I love it.

Bonus tip: set your keyboard shortcuts for quick, repetitive edit commands.

Another bonus tip: use LibreOffice for free instead of paying for a subscription to Microsoft Word.

6. USHUAIA ESPADRILLES FROM CHAUSSEA

https://www.chaussea.com

Once, in a Walmart-like box store in the middle of the Loire Valley, I came across a giant bin filled with espadrilles in all different colors, right next to bins with beach balls and beach towels. I just about dove into the bin in my excitement.

Then I moved back to the States, and I couldn’t find them here! Desperation! Anything I found was less comfortable and more expensive. I used all my researching skills to find the same Ushuaia brand at Chaussea. They’re now €9 ($9.70). They don’t ship to the U.S., but you can sign up with ColisExpat to have them forward the shipment.

Why do you need espadrilles if you’re an artist? First, Picasso wore espadrilles. Second, if you work from home, then you’ll feel sloppy wearing slippers all day, but espadrilles are almost as comfortable as slippers, breathable, and go with just about anything. Buy them in a range of colors, or stick with black, white, and neutrals. As typical from the photo, I wear them every day until socks-and-boots weather comes around again.

Chanel, Dior, Chloe, etc., all have espadrilles, which proves that they’re timeless, effortless chic, but any time I’ve tried on espadrilles that aren’t Ushuaia, I’ve found them scratchy. These Chanel leather espadrilles are $875 and the Dior are $850, but the Chloe are only $484.

Bonus tip: the Ushuaia denim espadrilles run large; the other sizes tend to be true. I’m 7.5 US, and I take a 38 EU.

7. PAPERBACKSWAP FOR BOOKS

www.paperbackswap.com

With a website that looks like it was designed in the early days of the World Wide Web and hasn’t (noticeably) been updated since, Paperback Swap is one of my favorite places. An online book swap!

It costs you to send a book, and you can either mail it yourself or use their labels for a little extra. Then you have a credit. And you can use that credit to search their database and find a book you’d like, and then that book will be sent to you for free.

Do they have everything? No. But they have a wide selection. As the name suggests, the real wealth of options will be in genre fiction paperbacks. I’ve found some great regency historical romances, but I’ve also found classic literature and forgotten books about Jane Austen and Shakespeare. They also have a good selection of how-to art books, old exhibition catalogues, and biographies of artists.

This collection of tips is all over the place, but they’re my favorite finds!

Let me know if you have any secret sources to share in the comments!

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As someone who thinks of herself as a writer first and artist second, I was delighted to learn about Substack. If Substack has a target demographic, I’m pretty sure I’m right at the center of the bullseye. Not only that, but the others I’m hoping to connect with will be in the center couple of rings of that bullseye. Hooray!

However. In reality I’m an artist first and a writer second, and as much as I’d love to I don’t have time to write all day, interact with other writers, build a community of pats-on-the-back, and so on. And I don’t have time to do how-to art tutorials, interview other creatives, or provide tips for success in a changing marketplace, and so on. There’s nothing that wouldn’t take copious amounts of time that I can create to be an irresistible value proposition for a paid subscription, especially that needs to be created and posted with a fixed, regular schedule.

So I’m not at the moment interested in soliciting paid subscriptions. I just want to write fun little essays to provide a larger context for the art itself. In my case, with my literary background, my art has a strong focus on character, history, and the imagination, and so I really enjoy writing about the different bits and pieces that go into what I do. I thought others might enjoy it too, but how do I go about finding the right readers?

I have a shop powered by Shopify that takes care of all my shop-front needs, and I have an Instagram account for most of my marketing needs. Most. But that Instagram algorithm is, as my husband likes to say, an abusive dad that will one day come home and give you a beating and the next day bring you home a bicycle. Not fair!

And the Shopify native newsletter whose subscriber count I worked so hard to increase is likewise victim to the various email inbox algorithm monsters which, now that I’ve reached a certain level of success, relegate me to the Promotions tab and Spam folder. Even after paying for emails to be sent. Not fair!

So diversification is indeed key, and Substack seemed to be the perfect solution. But I’ve run into issues.

Your site won’t keep the SEO

First, SEO. One of the main reasons to write a blog or long-form content is to plump up the keywords occurring rather naturally in your website’s code, thereby increasing its ranking in Google searches. If you write and publish your content exclusively on Substack, you won’t benefit from the SEO. They will.

Even if you change the URL to a subdomain, your site won’t keep the SEO

There’s a slight workaround, which involves creating a subdomain on your website and redirecting your Substack newsletter there. It costs $50 and requires coding, but you can do it. It took me all morning, but I did it. My new Substack URL is thestoriedlife.susannahcarson.com, not something to do with Substack. However, because this is a subdomain, those keywords STILL don’t count to my main site’s SEO, thereby defeating one of the reasons for writing long-form content in the first place.

Integrating your current newsletter list is not as straightforward as it seems

Apparently I can import all my current newsletter subscribers over to Substack. But then what? What happens when new people subscribe to my newsletter?

The embedded Substack sign-up form is ugly

Well, I can embed the Substack code into a page on my website. The only problem is that even though I selected the same brand palette, the Substack fonts are their own, the formatting is their own, and it comes with their policies and watermark. It does not look good. For another type of business, it might be perfectly fine. But for an artist with an eye for detail and a stomach-ache at the thought of the most minor inconsistencies?

The workaround embed code for the Substack sign-up form doesn’t work

I tried a free Substack sign-up embed code generator (substackapi.com), which was touted to be a way to simplify the sign-up form. It worked. Kinda. It was pared down, but for some reason I couldn’t center it, and I couldn’t write what I needed to write above it. Then, when I tried it out, it said a confirmation email had been sent, but no confirmation email was ever sent, and then it turned out that the sign-up had gone through anyway.

I could probably make it work by spending another couple of hours learning coding, but again, I’m an artist, not a coder, and at a certain point it’s the principle of the whole thing. This should be easy!

There’s no way to have the check-out newsletter opt-in redirect to Substack

And furthermore, even if I do figure out how to have my website’s sign-up page send harvested email addresses to the new Substack email list, what about the newsletter opt-in on the Shopify check-out page? There’s NO WAY I’ll ever be able to figure out how to have those emails head over to Substack, if it’s even possible.

And even more furthermore, my husband and I are a little confused about the emails we have for customers that don’t have to do with the newsletter and are essential for order-related business. We don’t want to meddle too much with any native Shopify email collection for fear of not being able to contact customers for better service.

There’s no way to automate based on website interactions

Oh, and automations. I’m not too keen on salesy automations, but a couple can be helpful, for instance abandoned check-out emails have been helpful to know that the so-called calculated shipping has occasionally gone wonky for multiple item and overseas orders. And sometimes I just want to send out a quick note that I’m having a flash sale, which would be inappropriate to the culture of Substack long-form newsletters.

There’s no way to have subscribers subscribed to both

So what about importing the current subscriber list over to Substack, keeping the native Shopify newsletter sign-ups on my website, and manually bringing over new newsletter subscribers to double enroll them onto Substack? Well, it’s a lot of work, but I think it could be done. However, if I double enroll subscribers, what happens when someone wants to unsubscribe? They’ll unsubscribe from one or the other, but not both (as far as I know, there’s no way of keeping track of new *un*subscribers on either platform), and so they’ll still be subscribed to one, and they’ll be confused and angry and be turned off from me and my content even more.

The Substack newsletter can also end up in Promotions and Spam anyway

And one more thing: Substack is subject to the same inbox algorithm monsters!

Our conclusion is that Substack is NOT a replacement for native Shopify email newsletters. The tech isn’t up to it. And it just doesn’t serve the same basic purpose.

IN A DREAM WORLD…

Substack integrates seamlessly with Shopify, with reliable email collection, customizable interface, newsletter automation, and archiving as a blog that appears simultaneously on the main domain and on Substack. Sigh…

HERE’S WHAT I’M GOING TO DO

For the time being I’m going to do a triple copy-and-paste:

1. to my website’s blog for engaging site content and naturally occurring SEO

2. to my native Shopify newsletter

3. to my Substack feed

Given that Substack’s goal is to attract people over to the larger Substack culture, and my goal is to attract people over to my website, there’s an inherent conflict of interests - much as there is with any social media outlet or ecommerce marketplace!

I’m still excited about Substack, though. I really am the bulleseye target demographic. So although I was hoping to integrate with my existing architecture, I guess I’ll just have to see if I can grow, slowly, patiently, and independently, over here on Substack.

Here's a link to my website!

But it really has nothing to do with jewelry, of course, and I know that full well. My mother is not the sentimental creature: that’s all me. For even though she has managed to weather a few storms, most of my family passed away when I was a very young adult, with the effect of magnifying my already sentimental nature into something of almost high-Victorian proportions. My most cherished possessions are a little dog my father carved as a child, a trophy his father won as an Olympic swimmer, and a gold pendant melted together from the family wedding rings.

The Victorians themselves were positively feverish in their attachment to items as extensions of people: one admirer of the pianist Liszt was so enamored of him that she asked to be buried with a cigar butt she had retrieved from the gutter as he passed by.

And of course George IV, Victoria’s great-uncle, was asked to be buried with a miniature portrait of the love of his life, his morganic wife Maria Fitzherbert.

George and Maria, you may know, were chiefly responsible for bringing the curiosity of Lover’s Eyes from France to England and turning them into a fad that would last for a handful of decades. Although some of the miniaturists are known, such as George Engleheart (who painted theirs), Richard Cosway, William Wood, and Charles Hayter, most were anonymous. Indeed, the more renowned miniaturists were hesitant to be associated with the eyes, as they considered them to be novelty items incapable of exhibiting the full extent of their ability to capture a likeness.

Today, we largely disagree: the Lover’s Eyes which have come down to us through history are both romantic and mysterious, and they seem to capture the twinkle or longing in an expression in a condensed fashion, without the support of the other features of the face. I have an antique Lover’s Eye in my collection, and how often I’ve wondered to whom it belonged! Most of my paintings are of subjects unknown to us, but with whom it’s possible to feel a connection – I like to think of them as imaginary heroines and sometimes heroes.

At the same time, though, I’ve often thought: if only I could walk to that exclusive jeweler’s shop in London where the ton bought keepsakes for their loved ones, and put in an order for a Lover’s Eye for someone I love! Oh, for a reliable time machine!

And then I thought: what if I could paint them, not just for myself, but for others, so that everyone could have access to a time machine! I’ve long been wanting to be able to cater to those of you out there who are as sentimental as I am, and I’ve done some custom work in the past, but just enough to know that it’s very hard to manage with the rest of, well, everything. They’re much more difficult, and I put an incredible amount of pressure on myself to get them precisely right in order to be worthy to be family heirlooms.

But I’ve decided to offer a stunner of an antique black jet Maltese cross brooch with repoussé pinchbeck (an allow of copper and zinc intended to look like gold). And in the future I’m going to attempt to do one, possibly two, at a time, as long as I can keep the time machine running smoothly….

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Modeled after the classical compendiums of the great gods, kings, martyrs, and heroes, these lists of goddesses, queens, saints, and heroines sought to round out the reader’s knowledge of ancient history and capture something of the enduring psychology of the current female.

In 1633, the Italian doctor, poet, and libertine Francesco Pona wrote the La Galeria delle Donne Celebri (The Gallery of Famous Women), a series of twelve embellished accounts of four lovers (including Helen of Troy and Semiramis), four chaste women, and four early Christian-era saints.

In 1642, the book enjoyed a loose French translation, La Galerie ou les tableaux des dames illustres, by François de Grenaille, who claims to have expurgated Pona’s text for the sake of decency—but he nevertheless wrote scenes of opulence and passion in such a way that encouraged the reader to imagine the rest. The trick, you see, was to meet the dual goals of “educere et placere”—to educate and to please—by mixing just the right amount of edifying historical and hagiographical biography with the exciting, seductive, and sometimes horrific bits that would provide readers with frissons of delight.

In 1647, the grandiloquent, pedantic, and (one assumes) pretentious Pierre le Moyne de la Compagnie de Jesus wrote La Galerie des femmes fortes (The Gallery of Strong Women), divided into chapters of “Les Fortes juives” from the Bible, “Les Fortes barbares” from the ancient world broadly, “Les Fortes romanes” from Ancient Rome, and “Les Fortes chrétiennes” from the intervening years, including Joan of Arc and ending with Marie Stuart. He begins by defending his decision to write about females, since females are needed to give birth to males. Each entry comes with a helpful moral question, such as whether great women are capable of true philosophy or of heroic virtue. I can think of few people I’d be less inclined to invite to my imaginary dinner party.

On the other hand, I would most definitely send a fan-girl invitation to the “Granddaughter of France”, Anne-Marie-Louise-Hortense d’Orléans, duchesse de Montpensier. She lived an eventful life from 1627-1693 as the granddaughter to Henry IV and the wealthiest unmarried heiress in France. She was an active participant in the French civil war known as La Fronde and she had her hopes of marrying the man she loved refused by Louis XIV, thereby making her a spirited and tragic heroine in her own right, about whom Madame de Lafayette (most known for La Princesse de Clèves, about which I’ve written elsewhere) wrote a novel called La Princesse de Montpensier. But she was also on the other side of publishing as the author of not only her famous Mémoires, but also of Divers portraits, La Galerie des portraits, and Portraits littéraires, which were collections of accounts of famous figures in history—many of which are female—penned by themselves, close acquaintances, or Montpensier herself. These anthologies were the Who’s Who of the 17^th-century literary gallery.

In 1790—notice the date—appeared the third volume (I can currently find no trace of the first two online) of La Galerie des dames françoises (The Gallery of French Women), by Jean-Pierre-Louis de Luchet, who was, prior to the Révolution, known as the Marquis de la Roche du Maine. He was a French journalist, essayist, and theatre manager who knew how to pivot to keep his head. The introduction to his Galerie is an interesting account of the mood in 1790, when the promises of the great Révolution were giving way to the realities of the Terror, and Luchet expressed his desire for moderation. As the goal of the Révolution was to cut ties with the past, it’s not surprising that Luchet’s Gallery of women does not feature actual women. Instead, they are a series of almost allegorical character “types” of women that one might come across in the France of his day: the haughty, overly educated Statira, the lazy, self-indulgent Marthésie, the naturally intelligent paragon Desdémona, the cool and indifferent Sapho….

As far as social commentary goes, they seem to be grounded in the French tradition of La Rochefoucauld’s Maximes, La Bruyère’s Caractères, and the habit of giving names like "Sia" and "Lady Gaga" to salon women of the previous century, but they also remind me a little of the Myers-Briggs accounts of personality types as well as Jungian-influenced interpretations of myths. Readers certainly would have enjoyed finding the good qualities in themselves and the bad qualities in others!

In 1844, if you subscribed to a magazine called the Écho de la Presse, you would have received a complimentary volume of 40 short entries of women authors, salonnières, and—as we would call them—influencers, accompanied by portrait engravings, and titled La Galérie des Dames françaises distinguées dans les lettres et les arts. Although some of the women were from previous centuries, some were still living and in their prime, making this free-gift-with-subscription a precursor to our current Top-Women-List that you’ll no doubt see when you’re standing in line at the grocery store.

But while you’re flipping through the pages of whatever insipid magazine it is this week (don’t get me wrong–I occasionally love a good bad magazine), save a sigh for the bygone era of the salons:

“Le salon, on le sait, était le principal théâtre de l’ancien régime. C’est là, dans des conversations rapides; c’est au milieu des petits soupers que les opinions nouvelles se fixaient. Les femmes y tenaient l’école du savoir-vivre, et leur exemple, les traditions élégantes que conservaient les plus âgées, les rendaient l’objet de l’empressement de toute la jeunesse distinguée; c’est sous leur influence qu’une bonne éducation s’achevait.”

“As we know, the salon was the main stage of the Ancien Régime [the French court before the Révolution]. It was there, during the rapid-fire conversation; there, during the little dinner parties, that new opinions materialized. There, the women held the School of Life, and their example, the elegant traditions that were upheld by the eldest, were eagerly pursued by all the youths of distinction; it’s under their influence that a good education was achieved.”

So. I decided to do my own Galerie des Dames: a series of 9 small oil portraits of very feminine but very strong women: Patience, Honoria, Victorine, Felicity, Celestine, Benedetta, Hero, Allegra, and Prudence.

Rather than written portraits, they're painted portraits, but just as with the anthologies they come with a heavy sense of story. These are ladies who possess—or so they’d like us to believe—the courage of the legendary heroines, the poise of the classical goddesses, the steadfastness of the martyred saints, the universality of the Revolutionary allegories, the specificity of their own circumstances, and, most of all, the romance of their unwritten stories.

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