Although we’re always celebrating Tasha around here (Audrey Eclectic is, after all, the home of Tasha Tuesdays!) today is a special day in itself around the web— it’s Tasha Tudor Day! Today, August 28, was Tasha’s birthday and she would have been 96 years old. I love that there are so many people out there who are as inspired by her as I am. She was an amazing woman!
I came across Tasha completely by accident several years ago. It was truly a matter of serendipity. I was looking through a bin of discounted books and came across a copy of “The Private World of Tasha Tudor.” The front cover had been ripped and so this beautiful book, written and photographed by Richard Brown (some of his images are shown above) came into my life.
Since that day when I brought that book home to our tiny apartment where I painted ‘for fun’ in an even tinier corner of our living room, I have been completely and utterly inspired by Tasha Tudor. Not just as an artist, but as a liver of life. Tasha managed to make a life and career for herself that would be enviable today, and may have seemed utterly unattainable back in the 30s when she first started painting. She was a young mother with little funds, no electricity or water in a dilapidated old house, little education and even less art education. In her era, there were few paths that a woman could dare to dream about, but she seemed to plow through those preconceived ideas of womanhood and motherhood and redefine life to suit her tastes.
When many women were bobbing their hair and tweezing their brows to oblivion, Tasha followed her love for the ‘old timey’ and because perhaps the world’s first vintage lifestyle enthusiast. She wanted to live ‘the life she had imagined’ and that life wasn’t the mainstream ideal. And that didn’t matter to her in the least.
Tasha, more than anything, grabbed life with both hands and bent it to fit her will, instead of the other way around. She knew she had a talent and a passion and she decided to pursue it instead of stuff it away and consider it a frivolity.
What is amazing about the success of Tasha Tudor is that it was a success completely on her own terms and created around her passion, spirit, and vision. There was no one ‘creating’ her, no one telling her how to cater to the masses and make herself fit into some mold that was not authentically her.
All these aspects of Tasha are so inspiring to me, are so exciting to me, and give me such hope. If she could do all she did in the time and place she did it, perhaps I can make my dreams come true to. In essence, I think that is the distilled message of Tasha. If you can dream it, then you can do it. Make it happen. And take joy while you do it.
Happy Tasha Tudor Day!~
~H
*Many thanks to Clarice of Storybook Woods and Suzanne at Blueberry Cottage for annually hosting this event. Be sure to check out their blogs for even more Tasha Love on this special day!
*Images above by Richard Brown from The Private World of Tasha Tudor
Sleightholm Folk Art 
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