Unlocking my closet feels like opening a jewel box; inside, a mirror glints back at me, surrounded by the bright colors of my trendy clothes. I move my easel beside the door and carefully line up my paint brushes like treasures on display. At the Academy, I’ve finally been allowed to paint from a life model, but this is my practice run: my first self-portrait.

My silver tubes of oil paint shine full of promise. I’m sitting down and squeezing dollops of ultramarine and burnt sienna paint out of their tubes. The familiar scent of linseed oil fills my bedroom, transforming it into a studio.

I look in the mirror and wonder how I can look more like a painter and not just a fashion model. My hair is messy and smells of Elnet hairspray. After a day of shooting an editorial for a magazine and running back and forth on high heels for that perfect shot, I’m tired. I imagine Sam, my teacher, telling me, in his not-so-subtle, sarcastic tone, to “stand up, or maybe I’m just too tired to paint today.” My feet might be tired, but my mind is not.

When painting, my thoughts go back and forth between wanting this self-portrait to show who I really am, wanting it to prove I’m a painter, and stepping back in humility to admit I’ve just started learning to paint the figure.

My shoulders keep sagging, changing the angle of my view. If I just sit up straight, maybe I’ll get the figure right, and it will look like a professional painted it. Every time I look back at that self-portrait, I just see mistakes.

That questioning voice, which I’ve been hearing since my student days, asks what right I have to call myself an artist, especially since I spent many days doing completely different things. Back then, I was working as a fashion model, and now I work in real estate.

To quiet that voice, I remind myself that only by doing can I potentially create something I can be proud of.

Painting a self-portrait is a battle between the urge to express myself and the idea that every self-portrait is part of a performance. Each time I sit in front of the mirror, it’s an experiment, a way to catch myself in this moment, knowing that tomorrow, that version of myself will have changed.

I’m not alone in this; artists have been painting their self-portraits for hundreds of years, and who knows, maybe even longer. I’m reading philosopher Cynthia Freeland’s Portraits & Persons. She opens her chapter on self-portraits with Albrecht Dürer, credited with some of the earliest autonomous self-portraits in Western art, dating to around 1500.

He painted a self-portrait as a wedding gift: he appears in expensive, elegant clothing and carefully groomed hair, a far cry from the lower-class workers’ category to which artists were usually assigned. He makes it clear that his taste and wealth are part of the proposal. The flower he holds symbolizes virility, showing his manliness.

In another self-portrait, art historians point to the Christ-like pose and frontal gaze. A full frontal pose was reserved for Christ alone. Some see this as almost delusional, but Joseph Leo Koerner suggests something more complicated: Dürer stages the gap between his own vanity and the higher role he longs for, painting himself with Christ’s gravity while still revealing himself as a mere man.

As a painter, I can imagine something more than fashion or theology in that gaze. When you paint yourself, you’re not making a passive copy.

When you look in the mirror, you inevitably trigger a crisis of self-consciousness.

You can pretend you’re just copying what you see, as I tried in my first self-portrait as a student, but the ego is never truly quiet.

One of the earliest women to paint herself was Sofonisba Anguissola. In her 1556 self-portrait, she wears a simple black dress that downplays her noble birth, and she holds a mahlstick, which she later stops showing in her work. Some art historians think she stopped showing it because she no longer needed such a prop. To me, it doesn’t look like a crutch at all; it looks symbolic: the mahlstick forms a cross, and her paintbrush points toward Jesus. The inscription reads,

“I, Sofonisba Anguissola, unmarried, am equal of the Muses and Apelles in playing my songs and handling my paints.”

For a noblewoman whose options were marriage or the convent, that combination of words and image feels like a woman who is determined to leave her mark on this world.

Sofonisba did not take either path at first. In this self-portrait with the Madonna and Child, it is tempting to see the painting itself as a kind of “motherhood.”

The famous image of herself as the subject of the painting on her teacher Bernardino Campi’s easel, looking out over his shoulder in aristocratic dress, is a very different way to portray herself. It makes you wonder what she is trying to say here. She looms over her teacher, looking very aristocratic. Maybe it’s a jest that shows she has surpassed her master. She painted many more self-portraits, and her final one was when she was about eighty-five years old.

Looking at both painters, I can relate to the impulse to use symbolism to try out a version of myself that is not immediately obvious.

There’s a feeling of secrecy when you paint a gesture whose meaning is only known to you, the artist.

In one of my own self-portraits, for example, a string of pearls runs from inside the mirror and disappears off the edge of the canvas. The pearls represent Time. The phrase “And Time is a string of pearls” comes from a U2’s Passengers collaboration, “Your Blue Room.”

I chose pearls because each one feels like a moment, separate, precious, but strung together, they make up the flow of my life and vanish into the unknown off the edge of the canvas.

In the mirror image, the brush points toward my heart, a subtle declaration of where my loyalties lie.

At first glance, it just looks like a comfortable pose, but for me, it was a challenge to paint from the mirror while facing straight on. Details like these are almost invisible to others, yet for me, they carry private meaning. Self-portraits always have an element of a coded diary entry.

There is another way I use myself in paintings, not as a self-portrait but as a stand-in model, a habit I share with many artists, including Rembrandt.

Cynthia Freeland notes that, beyond showing off status, some self-portraits, especially Rembrandt’s, were probably studies for other paintings. He used himself as a readily available, inexpensive model when planning certain historical scenes and biblical portraits.

At a deeper level, she argues, his long series of self-portraits also tries to reveal his psychological identity and to face aging and mortality by “trying on” different versions of himself over the years.

Using myself as a model, even when it isn’t a formal self-portrait, carries some irony: behind the practicality is something more. Calling myself a “cheap model” is a script I have used to pretend I’m just practicing my technical skills.

People love to decipher a painting, whether it’s a self-portrait or not. They look for symbols, stories, and hidden meanings, but it’s hard to say what is truly behind any image.

Even as a painter working on a self-portrait, the layers of narrative behind a painting are not easily expressed in words, and viewers will always form their own narrative, no matter what an artist says about the work.

I can talk about status, symbolism, “cheap models,” or Freeland’s theories, but the experience of facing myself in the mirror is messier than any of those neat explanations. The stories that we tell about our lives in artists’ statements, biographies, and dinner-party anecdotes can’t wholly capture the turbulent reality of being human.

Every time I put my brush down in our Catskills studio and run to a meeting or bring my daughter to work, I don’t see a story about being “a real artist.” I see all the roles along with contradictions that won’t fit on a painting or a label.

I’m a mother, wife, painter, model, harp student, real estate broker, entrepreneur, sometimes confident, and sometimes uncertain.

Some mornings, I get up early and try to finish a drawing before my cell phone starts bleeping, and I need to run around to appointments. Other days, I manage to paint all day with a few interruptions.

Switching hats is part of my daily life. It’s messy and imperfect, but somehow each role feeds into the other, creating synergies I never would have imagined in my carefree student days. I’m grateful for each moment I get to pick up my brush or pencil.

Maybe you have your own list of roles and contradictions that don’t fit on a single label. What are the names, jobs, or stories you carry that others might not see?

I’m in 2nd grade at my local elementary school in the Netherlands, and we sit at small tables in groups. Today, we’re expecting visitors. Normally, that would be exciting, anything to break up the routine! But not today. I keep glancing at the clock and wishing I could be home with my dolls. My arm itches, and the cast makes me fidget even more. I broke my elbow a couple of weeks ago, rushing downstairs and slipping over a folded table. But the cool part is that now I have a cast covered with the names of family and friends. When it comes off, I’ll ask to keep it for my dolls.

We grab our chairs and form a circle. Two older men come into the classroom, and they remind me of my grandpa; they must be that old. They wear some medals on their jackets. I wonder if they were in the army, like my grandpa. They sit in our circle and tell us that they were in the Resistance during WWII. That sounds exciting. They tell us stories about how they would sneak news around, blow up a couple of things. I’m all ears.

As we listened, one man told us that the Germans captured them near the end of the war and put them in a prison camp. They were always hungry. After they were freed, all they could think about was food. They were too weak to go home, but they were allowed to leave the camp, so they set out to find something to eat. It was their lucky day as they caught a loose chicken running around. They made a campfire and started roasting the chicken. An English-speaking soldier ran into them and warned that eating that rich, juicy chicken after months of starving could make them very sick or even kill them. I felt so sorry for them. In the end, they couldn’t eat the chicken.

I don’t remember the rest of that day, but I will never forget the story about the chicken and how that soldier saved their lives probably twice. It’s one of the first war stories I remember hearing from people who experienced it. The two older men have long gone now.

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We entered the room where a teacher was demonstrating how to play a harp. While listening to the song, I dreamed of plucking the strings in a long dress with bows and frills, playing like the teacher. My parents gently steered me out of the room without a serious conversation with the teacher. We entered the room with the violin next, but it couldn’t match the harp’s sound. After passing the trumpet, horn, and clarinet, the flute was next. The flute was appealing, but the harp’s pull was stronger. With one question, that dream ended. “How are you planning to carry that harp on your bike to weekly lessons?” And not only that, it was over our budget. Reluctantly, I chose the flute, which became my instrument for the next eight years.

Recently, while scrolling through Instagram, I saw a post from an old modeling roommate in NYC celebrating her birthday. Every year, as a gift to herself, she does something just for her. As my own 50th birthday drew closer and my husband asked what I wanted, I began thinking about what would be fun for me. I hadn’t seriously thought about playing the harp since childhood, but after reading Ted Gioia’s “Music to Raise the Dead”, the harp had been on my mind.

I began to wonder how I would learn to play while living in a rural area. I needed not only a teacher but also an actual harp. Anything beyond our basic groceries requires a drive of over an hour. No harps available within a 3 to 4-hour drive. The price was also still a consideration. And would I love learning to play it as much as I thought I would? Secondly, I needed to make sure my left arm could handle the positioning. I had broken my elbow as a child, and the bone was not set right. Because of that, I have limited mobility in that arm.

I searched online for harp teachers in the Catskills. I found ONE, near Albany, under two hours away. She was still willing to teach, though her hands weren’t what they used to be after her recent stroke. Her fortitude impressed me.

A week or so later, on a cold March morning, I went to meet Claudia. Despite the sky threatening snow, I pulled up to the rehab center with my hands sweating. Waiting by the lobby fireplace, Claudia greeted me with a smile and a surprisingly firm handshake.

We walked into her suite, where two harps stood side by side. Claudia motioned for me to sit. My hands were shaking slightly as she encouraged me to pluck a few strings. The resonance quivered through my stiff and still sweating fingers. I struggled through my first few notes and quickly realized how difficult this was going to be. Claudia told me she had been playing piano most of her life, and she decided to learn the harp at age 50. I smiled; it felt like the Universe had brought us together for a reason. At 50, I have also just chosen the harp.

With my childhood wish fulfilled, I became curious about the harp’s history. My fascination with history must come from my dad. He was 50 years old when he finished his Master’s in History at Leiden University. I like this pattern of midlife growth instead of a midlife crisis!

Egypt left a lasting impression on me because when my dad came back from his first trip to Egypt, he was enthralled by it, and it was hard for him to return to his normal life. One morning, just days after he returned, he drove to work through the fog and didn’t pay attention when passing a car. He had a head-on collision with another car. He was lucky to make it out alive. I remember the fear in my mother’s eyes when she dropped my brother and me off at our neighbor’s house to go to the hospital.

My dad had plenty of time to prepare a lengthy slide show of his trip after his accident. Our family gathered around the projector. Through slides, my dad took us back to Egypt with him.

A few weeks ago, I took a trip with my dad to Leiden to the Museum of Antiquities. They have a great Egyptian collection. As I’ve been researching for this story, I’ve come across an early New Kingdom visual representation of “the Harper’s Song”. It’s a limestone relief from the Saqqara tomb-chapel of Paatenemheb. The inscription on this relief states that the song was copied from the tomb of King Intef. I’ve been looking at this limestone relief, not realizing it’s in Leiden! I must have walked right by it on my last visit! It will be a good reason to go back.

What I did find is the reconstructed harp; only the leather remained, and the wood parts and strings were reconstructed. Its age is anywhere between 1300 and 30 BCE.

Evidence shows the harp first appeared in Mesopotamia around 3500 BCE, and it probably made its way to Egypt from there. The harp appeared in Old Kingdom tomb paintings at banquets, festivals, funerals, and rituals, symbolizing harmony between people and the divine.

Images of a blind harpist accompany the hieroglyphs of the Harper’s Songs in tombs. Other hymns to Osiris and Re are often found on nearby walls, suggesting that the songs were part of a larger funerary program. Later, the Harper’s Songs were also copied onto papyrus in hieratic, suggesting they may have taken on a wider life beyond the tomb. What I find most interesting is that scholars still debate whether these texts are secular in tone or funerary in function, because some of them sound skeptical and even encourage the listener to enjoy life while they can.

I think the tomb versions focus on funeral rituals, and the later papyrus copies show how the tradition spread. The songs seem symbolic, meant for the rituals, just as the banquet scenes are about the afterlife, not about eating a real meal. Maybe the song is meant for both the dead and the living. The “Carpe Diem” message could be about the deceased’s enjoyment of life in the afterlife and about reminding those left behind to value life and enjoy every moment. The song could be a bridge between both worlds.

What did Egyptian music actually sound like, I wonder? Since the Egyptians didn’t have a musical notation system and only left texts of songs, not melodies, we can only speculate. It might have sounded something like this:

Another great place to explore the Egyptians is the Metropolitan Museum of Art in NY. During a recent trip, I started in the Egyptian section instead of my usual European paintings. Having researched the harp, I knew the Egyptian collection included fine examples from the Middle and New Kingdoms.

I noticed an unusually shaped harp that looked like a large soup ladle. The soundboxes are all open and were once covered with animal skin rather than a thin, resonant layer of wood, as in modern harps.​

I found the arched harp among the New Kingdom artifacts. Being in front of an instrument over 3,300 years old in such great condition made me feel strangely connected to a distant civilization.

Every evening after dinner, I practice my harp. My fingers are slowly running through the C major scale, up and down the B flat, and exploring the F sharp. It gives me this extra layer of joy to know I’m playing an ancient instrument. Hitting notes that have been resonating through history.

Sources:

A close friend of my father, an artist, gives me a carefully wrapped parcel. I tear off the paper to find a box of colorful pastel crayons. I grab the pink one and it stains my fingers, but I don’t care. Next are a sketchbook and a book about drawing with pastels. I’m thrilled. I’ve always loved drawing, but I’d get frustrated when my work didn’t match what I saw in my head.

After our guests leave, I sprint upstairs to my room. Sitting at my desk I grab the instruction book, sketchbook, and precious box of pastels. The pastels are slippery and messy as I try to mix colors. I keep trying night after night. The neat pastels become shattered stumps, and my drawings never look like the book’s examples. Each attempt leaves me a little more disappointed.

I feel frustrated that my hands cannot make what my mind imagines. There is a sting of envy when I flip through the instruction book, wishing my work could look even half as polished. Eventually, the hope I felt at first gives way to a dull sense of frustration and resignation. One night, with heavy hands I dump the remaining pastels and “how to” book into my desk’s bottom drawer, adding it to my pile of frustrations.

​Sixteen years later, I find myself in Amsterdam. I am 28 years old. The rain splatters down from the awning of the US Embassy entrance. I’ve just submitted paperwork to renew my work permit as a fashion model. I have hours to kill before I can pick it up. I wander toward Museum Square, searching for shelter from the wind that renders my umbrella useless.

As I make my way through the square, I notice a woman with a pretty face surrounded by roses and honeysuckle. She’s holding an arrow and staring at me. I walk over for a closer look. The poster announces an exhibition of Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s artwork at the Van Gogh Museum. When I enter the first room, which is filled with Rossetti’s paintings, the colors burst from the walls. Many dreamy faces look at me, including the woman surrounded by flowers. It’s Venus, and she must have asked Cupid to shoot me straight through the heart.

For hours, in a trance, I drift from room to room. Symbolism drips from each painting. I want to know every story behind each face. The urge to paint and draw returns powerfully. Painting has always been my calling, but I never received any training. Goosebumps run along my arms, my muscles tense with desire and regret. I sit on a bench, memories rushing in, as tears sting my eyes. I ask myself, why did I ever stop drawing?

When I was 16 and it was time to choose post-high school options, the idea of attending art school briefly crossed my mind. But the school I visited lacked instruction in figurative painting and charged high tuition. Disappointed, I stopped pursuing it. Still, the dream remained.

I’m sitting on the bench surrounded by Rosetti’s paintings and reading a plaque about his life. Suddenly, butterflies flutter in my stomach. I know what I must do: find a school to learn to draw and paint the way I want to, without worrying about degrees or high tuition. I just need to find the right place.

After months of research, I found the National Academy of Fine Arts and Design in NYC. I considered several schools. I was looking for strong technical training and an encouraging community. Some programs were very conceptual. Others were rigid or expensive. The National Academy’s long history and status as one of the first US art academies interested me the most.

When I learned that Sam Adoquei teaches painting and drawing there using the Atelier approach, I was inspired. This practical hands-on method allows every student to learn at their own pace, regardless of background or experience. That appealed to me. I wanted to build fundamentals and grow freely, free from pressure to conform. So I moved from Paris to NYC and continued modeling while attending art school. Soon, I was packing heels next to paintbrushes. I’d rush to fashion castings on my lunch breaks, ignoring the paint on my pants.

On my first day of class in New York, I showed up with all my tools from the supply list. I packed every paintbrush and paint tube in my new bag. With my fancy new sketch book of thick expensive paper placed under my arm, I enter class. Sam has posed a model and told me to draw her.

With a piece of charcoal staining my fingers black, I painstakingly try to draw the model during the first 20-minute pose. She’s about 4 inches tall and floats lost in the middle of my 24-by-36-inch drawing paper. Sam walks over, takes one glance, and knows I’m a blank canvas. He smiles and asks me what I plan to do with the rest of the empty space on the paper. I don’t know.

He suggests that I start with the outlines of the “big basic shapes” and fill in the paper. Oh, and switch paper after each 20-minute pose. He also recommends I get a thick block of cheap newsprint, unless I have unlimited funds and can afford to throw away a piece of that high-quality paper every 20 minutes. I give my goofy laugh, feeling stupid and green as grass, but eager.

At lunch, I run to the art store and pick up a pad of the cheap paper needed for my big basic shapes.

I didn’t realize it then, but those basic shapes started a years long quest to balance the fashion world, my art, and motherhood. My first year at the academy was intense; I spent six to eight hours a day in the studio. My technique improved quickly. After a year I won first place in the student portrait category of the Student Exhibition and competition. At the start of 2006 I received a full scholarship for the next year, and that same month, I learned I was pregnant.

I was excited to become a mother and hopeful about continuing my art. I stayed at the Academy until summer break, fully intending to return in the fall. I did not realize how much your life changes with motherhood. An art school is not a place to bring a newborn, and I still needed to work on fashion assignments to provide for my daughter.

I refused to give up art, but couldn’t continue at the Academy. Instead, I practiced drawing during breaks on long days on set. I’d pick a simple object, like an apple from the fruit bowl, and draw it. The many hours I spent at airports turned into an opportunity to practice perspective and capture moving figures. People sleeping in chairs were my steady models I could secretly draw. I had a small pochade box with paints that I used to turn my hotel rooms into a temporary art studio. With my art supplies packed alongside my clothes in my suitcase, it was a constant challenge to stay under the luggage weight limit. I had to accept progress in baby steps, building patience and persistence.

About ten days after my daughter’s birth, I bought my first home in the Catskill Mountains. Why I bought that home is part of this story but also part of another story for another day. So, for several years I split time between the Catskills, New York City, and the rest of the world. I felt as if I were living a double life, constantly swapping between my roles as a fashion model, a mother, and an artist. The traveling and transitions wore me down.

Even though the four-inch figures floating in the middle of my paper had grown to their proper size, and my charcoal-stained fingers now mostly held paint brushes, I needed more room to breathe. I wanted to spend more time with my daughter. I longed to live full-time in a landscape that matched the scale of the changes I felt inside. I knew the Catskill Mountains were that landscape.

In 2012, after six frustrating years of trying to balance motherhood, modeling, and art, I directed my focus away from my sixteen-year modeling career. I began searching for a way to live full-time in the Catskills. Living in this rural area offered few job opportunities, so I struggled to figure out how to work and live in the Catskills. I asked other moms in the area what they did for a living when they moved here.

One of the moms suggested I speak with a local real estate broker whom she worked for. She loved working in real estate because it gave her flexible scheduling, so she could be home when her daughters came home from school. This gave me hope that I could make this change work. With intention, I worked toward a career in real estate, trading runways for ridges. It took four more years of juggling to create a home where I could be present daily for my daughter and art. I also found a new partner, a painter and a passionate art lover who wanted to live the way I did.

Today, the paint and charcoal still stain my fingers. But now they capture the lines of these mountains, and there is only this life, no double life.

That box of pastels stayed with me throughout the years. It lived in Paris, New York City, and the Canary Islands, then returned to New York and the Catskills. I don’t use pastels for my art, but I keep this box to remind me to never give up on my dreams.