// TOWNES //

Volcom button-up; Midnight Rider Townes Van Zandt shirt via Bona Drag; rings from Spell and the Gypsy Collective, Southset, Rejoice the Hands and vintage/markets; hat from Camberwell markets.

I’m growing a couple of cacti in my front yard – where my dog can’t rip them out and chew them up, because that’s what she’s into – and I’m obsessed with them. I check them every day. One’s a Euphorbia Mammillaris Variegata that blushes pink and orange in the sun; and the other is a tiny Opuntia Santa Rita that is rapidly growing new pads and will eventually be like a purple prickly pear with yellow flowers.

So this obsession – teamed with recent thistle-harvesting and flower-pillaging activities – has me wondering: is my newfound fascination with plantlife a symptom of ageing? As you get older, do parts of your child mind return? Maybe being more aware of mortality restores your sense of wonder and fascination with the world.

I was really into plants and animals and mushrooms (in a non-druggy way) when I was a kid; and I would collect fungi and burrs and seedpods and flowers and leaves, but there was a whole bit there during adolescence where I wasn’t really interested. I was just into Dead Kennedys and drinking and angst and resistance and posters of Trent Reznor.

Also, I distinctly remember being a teenager who was really preoccupied with trying to make things happen a certain way. Eventually, in my early 20s, I read that DFW line about trying to engineer your fate, and now I kind of drift along and just try to make good decisions and work hard without trying to force anything. But I was also, at 19, right into drinking and smoking and putting on all those artistic-literary affectations. I later realised that drinking and smoking actually made me a worse artist, so I scaled that rightback too. Maybe getting rid of those compulsions and preoccupations freed up some time for me to start looking at and appreciating the natural world again.

Anyway, I’m thinking about this because I sometimes see qualities of my parents surfacing in me – which is in no way a bad thing – and I am just so looking forward to heading home to the farm at the end of this week. I’m looking forward to walking through the garden with my mum while she tells me about her different plants, whether they’re happy and what lives in them; and to seeing my dad walk into the big wooden kitchen at midday, with some delicate, beautiful insect or bird cupped in his broad oil-stained palms. I’m even looking forward to hearing those goddamn cicadas for a second.

Over the past few years, I think I’ve softened my resistance against life’s inertia, which is making things a little easier. There’s a difference between working hard and struggling against reality, although both are hard fights. But anyway, being psyched on a colour-changing cactus comes with way less complications and contingencies than some of the things I fretted over when I was younger. 

BONES // STOP MOTION

Here's how it all happens. Music by The Black Angels.

M R M O J O R I S I N '

Where's your will to be weird?

ZEISS IKON

My step-grandpa sent me his old Zeiss Ikon camera, complete with all the manual settings I never properly learnt to use and a screw-on case and cover that smells so leathery and sturdy.

I'm still getting the hang of setting aperture and manual focusing, and I almost wrecked the whole film by trying to take it out without reading the manual first... I ended up sitting on the bathroom floor at 4am -- trying for a makeshift darkroom -- taking the film out without rewinding it, and stashing it in a few envelopes, because I didn't use the rewind release button. Always something to learn. 

But anyway, these are the images that survived. 

And it's such a cool thing. Not knowing if you've actually captured that image right. Knowing that there's a finite shot, that you can't just shoot ten of the same thing and hope one is right (which is my default move with digital cameras). Having to quietly, steadily, think about what you're doing. It's really reminded me to concentrate, go steady, appreciate the practice of art. To be patient sometimes, and to -- at other times -- just go ahead hope for a lucky light-leak. 

CALIFORNIA DREAMING

California Dreaming print available here (limited edition of 10).

Spell and the Gypsy Collective California Dreaming lookbook.

Bright turquoise the colour of the walls in that house you want to live in – by the beach, with the half-collapsed bamboo fence; the surfboards on the front lawn, the fluttering prayer flags, the tequila-sunrise frangipani tree. 

Pale pink like your first love’s blush, like fairy-floss at dusk, like the first summer sunburn, like the last late winter rose.

Crisp white like sun-starched bed sheets, like smiles, like hot cement, like ice cubes clinking; like the underbelly of an osprey, the foam on messy breakers, the sharp white clouds against a high summer sky. 

And blue the colour that’s in everything; the sky, the sea, the songs; the sweetly laughing eyes.

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I love when Spell and the Gypsy Collective release a new lookbook (see the whole thing here, and shop it here), because it’s always full of the most beautiful moods and muses. It’s the best time to get out the sketchbook and draw away, absent-mindedly considering what I might do this summer….

Print available here. 

GREAT NORTHERN

Hey, if you're in LA, you should get down to Costa Mesa right now. Immediately.

This little piece of mine (only slightly different colours...) is hanging in Element's end-of-year art show/party/all things lovely and fun. More details here.

EVERYTHING'S A SECRET

Little experiments and Reno.

I've been working on so many projects that are -- at the moment -- being kept under wraps. I'm really stoked with how some of them have come out, and I can't wait to send them out into the world... but I do, actually, have to wait to send them out into the world. 

So for now, it's little hints and warm-ups, cast-offs and seconds, and the little pieces I make whenever I get a sliver of free time. 

SKETCHBOOK: ABOUT THISTLES

Rings from Southset, Spell and the Gypsy Collective and Rejoice the Hands. 
Necklace from Spell and the Gypsy Collective.

Every now and then I walk Humble along a creek at the bottom of our street, then up some stairs through a new estate, which is generically named 'Valley Lakes' and is attempting to pass off a water-filled quarry pit as a water feature. 

Just about every time I walk through Valley Lakes, another obese, boxy, concrete home has appeared, positively smothering the block its built on, and, at times -- so desperate for a bigger sprawl -- it shares an external wall with a neighbouring house. None of these houses have backyards, or if they do, they're the size of a hallway. The front gardens are pebbles and concrete, everything else is paved. 

I feel like, looking at these marching rows of bleak status-houses, these people have consciously decided they don't ever want to come in contact with the natural world again. That they have decided it might be best to drive to work along sealed roads, sit in a sterile office all day, and then return home to a house full of manmade surfaces, and just stay there. Or maybe, feeling bold, they might go to the allocated strip of green down the road, to the park. 

This all is, of course, not really a philosophy I can align myself with. 

But last time I walked through Valley Lakes, I spotted something I really could subscribe to. Giant, prehistoric-looking clumps of thistles were sprouting all over the vacant lots. The slabs of land soon to host the sad piles of rendered brick and fake marble were raising one last act of defiance -- futile as it was. 

I had a closer look at the thistles, because, like everything in the southern reaches of Australia, they seemed to be larger, wilder, more quintessentially Antipodean in their dinosaur proportions. And they were. Totally sculptural and violent, and larger than my fist. And realllllllly difficult to cut from the bush to take home as souvenirs. 

But I did really want these thistles blooms in my home, because they are a hint at -- or a warning of -- the fact that everything has a method of defence, a way of protecting itself, a path to recourse. And for those who are willing to look hard enough, it's a reminder that the natural world, if we continue to force her hand, will one day show us the myriad ways she intends to defend herself, against us. 

But unfortunately, I suspect no one in Valley Lakes is going to look too hard at those thistles. Or, if they do, they will see them simply as another nuisance, something to be uprooted and paved over before it rises up.

LATELY ...

So, lately...

I talked to the lovely Beth from Southset -- fellow boxer-dog mama and curator of awesome goods from around the globe -- over at Apri Blog, about where I grew up, what I do, and the ever-raging battle for the identity of my spirit animal.

If you live in Melbourne, you really probably should get down to this gig or this gig, which are my housemate Ben Whiting's last Melbourne gigs for the year. He's heading off to our homeland (the beautiful northern stretches of the NSW coast), and you won't have a chance to check out his music again until 2014... Unless you live around the Byron Bay area, then you're in luck.

I've just posted off some artwork to Costa Mesa, to be included in Element's end-of-year show (December 5). I was runner-up in the illustration category of their artist search, along side some really talented creatives... So if you're in beautiful Costa Mesa with all it's cute prickly pears and dusty-blue wide desert skies, you should head along and check it out -- and let me live vicariously!

And other than all that, I'm working on a couple of exciting new things behind the scenes... waking up way too early, appreciating my beautiful life, buying loads of new and unusual cacti and just-getting-through these last few weeks at work. 

Hope you're all well x

LUCKY

Lucky... original available for purchase here.

I've noticed, over the past year, that I'm always starting email replies with: 'Sorry, things have just been so hectic...'

For a whole year I've been saying that -- as if, sometime soon things are going to be less hectic, and I'll start replying to emails, messages, phone calls and comments in a timely fashion. But I'm realising -- more and more -- that things just are hectic. We're always trying to jam more stuff into less time, never reaching the bottom of that to-do list. 

And speaking of which, I've started viewing my to-do lists as aspirational compositions. As in, if I get about three things crossed off, that's a job well done. 

But anyway, what I'm saying is that I seem to be less and less able to find time to post stuff here, so sorry if things are a bit quiet. I'm hoping to share a bit more in coming weeks, but that might be aspirational too... At any rate, I'm always posting sketchbook pics over on Instagram (@raychponygold)... And I'm always adding something new to that to-do list. 

SKETCHBOOK: THE FRUIT OF 40,000 YEARS

For those of you who can't get past my doctor's handwriting (and most days, I can't decipher it either), the handwritten passage is from Look Homeward, Angel, and reads:

The seed of our destruction will blossom in the desert, the alexin of our cure grows by a mountain rock, and our lives are haunted by a Georgia slattern, because a London cut-purse went unhung. Each moment is the fruit of forty thousand years. The minute-winning days, like flies, buzz home to death, and every moment is a window on all time.

- Thomas Wolfe

HYPERCOLOUR BADLANDS

Images from Spell and the Gypsy Collective's amazing new lookbook (please, stop sending me broke!), the beautiful, rock-n-rollin' mind of Amanda Leigh Smith, here, and the wilds of Pinterest.

This is summer sunshine warming your hands // this is the strongest whiskey raising your heart // this is humid nights under the stars // this is hypercolour hallucinations and cosmic storms in dreams // this is the next step //

WONDER AND AWE

Recently, I woke up to an email from my dad -- a notorious morning person like me -- full of pictures of a cicada that he'd just caught hatching from its shell up in the back paddock behind our house. 

After that, I was pretty stoked for the rest of the day -- I started looking forward to hearing a sound that I usually hate: that ear-piercing buzz-saw whine that emanates from the eucalypt forest behind my parents' house. It's a sound that seems to swell and pulsate with the midday summer heat. It's a sound that means I'm sitting in the kitchen of my home, or that I'm on the back verandah surrounded by family. It means Christmas and catching up with school friends and swimming in the creek and going to the bush races on Boxing Day. It's sunburn, fresh fish, dad's scotch and mum's flower arrangements. 

And also, those photos that dad sent me, they reminded me of the overwhelming excitement I always felt when I caught a cicada hatching on a fence post. It's kind of rare to see them in their wingless, ground-dwelling incarnation. It's a weird moment to see them crack out of their old shell, wings wet and furled and pale and vulnerable, but knowing exactly what they need to do to join the other cicadas in the air. Whenever I witnessed one of these emergences, I would always race down to the shed to tell my dad. And it's a kind cool thing that now, even though I live half a continent away, he can share these little things from home with me. 

SEA SALT, WHISKEY, SABBATH

Late sunsets // sea salt // whiskey // and Sabbath.

SKETCHBOOK: NIGHT VISIONS

As is pretty much standard behaviour for me, I've been getting particularly obsessive about drawing lately. Like, preoccupied by it all the time, starting between two and 10 new pieces each day, constantly feeling as thought I'd forgotten something I meant to add, or start, or pursue.

So I'm trying to ease back a little -- not to mention give my overwrought neck muscles a break -- by working steadily on projects, taking long wandering breaks to walk by the creek with Humble, go on puppy play-dates and drink in city-park sunshine with nice new people, and foster a budding obsession with an old film camera that my step-grandpa sent me.

Just to restore a little bit of balance, a modicum of moderation... But, anyway, this is my sketchbook for now.

HELLO HALLOW

I've never really gotten into halloween. 

Growing up, I couldn't really trick-or-treat, because it was a pretty serious bike ride to get to the nearest house with kids. And it just hasn't ever been a huge part of Australian culture, that I've noticed. 

However, it is always fun to dress up, and it is always fun to draw something unusual. 

So, I hope everyone has a spooky, fun halloween and doesn't dose up too hard on the sugar.

FOREVER UNTIL THE END

In the spooky spirit of the season...

NEW TREASURES ...

I've been meaning to update my online shop for so long, so now I've finally posted a whole bunch of new prints for sale. I've also posted a few A5 original one-off drawings, and will keep putting new ones up every now and then. It's been a fun little project, making lots of little completed artworks. 

Check it all out here.

OPUNTIA SANTA RITA

These are the things that show up when you shut your eyes, and disappear when you open them again.

ARTIST / SHAUN KARDINAL

All work by Shaun Kardinal

Science in the seventies and white high-socks with one navy stripe, one red. Wood-panelled station wagons and the first time a teenager ever heard Sabbath. Desert lots with satellite dishes, family holidays to look at a waterful, canyon, monument. Psychedelic orange interiors, macrame plant hangers, aviator sunglasses.

These are all things Shaun Kardinal's work makes me think of. Memories that aren't mine, but seem so warm and nostalgic anyway. I have a great love for what this man does, not the least of which is produce affordable art.

In his own words:

I like to create. But, of course, you know it’s more than that.

I am constantly inspired by, frustrated with, raving about, and occasionally crushed by the work around me.

I cannot see enough of it. I must always hear more of it. Even when I’ve worn myself out of it.

I want to make cheap art. Free as often as possible.

Revelations require not recompense.

Which I totally agree with, because every day I'm delighted by the fact that there are just so many things for us to marvel with. So many, in fact, that it's hard to keep up. 

Shaun Kardinal is one of those many.

His Tumblr.

And Flickr.