Painting Portraits of Everyone I’ve Ever Dated, Joseph Earp | Book 66, June 2025

Painting Portraits of Everyone I’ve Ever Dated, Joseph Earp | Book 66, June 2025

“The easiest way to speak without actually having to say anything.”

The long weekend—and that sneaky mid-week public holiday—threw me off completely. The school’s pre-set sirens rang out across the day, and for a moment, I was convinced I should be at work. Outside, it was wet and cold. I’d planned to take the kids down to the port to photograph a shipping container docking, but honestly, the motivation wasn’t there.

Instead, we stayed in. We tackled a paint-by-numbers I picked up in Claremont earlier in the week, and I managed to bring in the washing just before the rain returned—small domestic victories.

Later, Snapfish reminded me to “buy something or we’ll delete your photos.” So I went digging through old uploads. There were shots from a night out in my twenties, blurry with flash and joy; a surfing lesson I once booked a week off work for; the last gig my late cousin’s band ever played; and a night with my best friend, back when I had only one child and she wasn’t a mum yet. A quiet, unexpected trip down memory lane.

All of this—nostalgia, the hazy stillness of a home day, flickers of relationships past—made for the perfect backdrop to read Painting Portraits of Everyone I’ve Ever Dated. I didn’t take notes this time. I read it cover to cover over four sittings, letting it speak to the quiet spaces in between parenting, work, and old memories.

Joseph Earp’s debut novel follows Ellie Robertson, a painter on the cusp of thirty, grappling with the messy threads of art, ambition, and human connection. Having just scored a major career win, Ellie decides to confront the ghosts of relationships past—not through closure or conversation, but through canvas. She sets out to paint portraits of every person she’s ever dated, from childhood crushes to the one ex she may not be over. It’s a funny, tender, slightly chaotic journey—both outward and inward.

Ellie’s quest brings up all the contradictions of intimacy: how flawed our recollections can be, how impossible it is to pin people down in words or brushstrokes, and how often we resist really seeing others because it means we might have to really see ourselves.