GO HOME

Volcom 'Holy Smokes' tank, 'Runaways' jacket;

vintage/markets necklaces;

Rejoice the Hands

,

Millie Savage Silver

and vintage/markets rings. 

The world I know best feels softer, especially in summer. Although, I’m still afraid of snakes and I suffer in the midday sun, I can’t wait to get home to the places I navigate by instinct, and know as second nature.

There the water is gentler and the shade is sweeter. I know exactly the tree lines of the horizon even as I turn away from them; it’s the east and west I've looked to more times than anywhere else. I know what certain clouds foreshadow, and I know what changes in the weather taste like on the air. 

It is exactly how I remember summer.

Of course, I love summer for the sun that thaws out my now-southern bones. I like lazing in the afternoon sun with my dog, lying around on the grass and not caring about it sticking in my clothes. I like finally being able to swim again, anywhere, salt or fresh. I like drinking a cold beer and holding the can against my forehead between sips. I like John Lee Hooker playing while I’m making a cool, fresh salad in the shade of the kitchen. I like reading All the Pretty Horses, again, in front of a struggling pedestal fan. I like watching live music and feeling crowded and humid and young. I like stone fruit and will probably eat nectarines and cherries every day for the next couple of months. I like everything blossoming and verdant and giving off the heat of life that is photosynthesis, that is growing, that is energy transforming.

But most of all, what I like about summer, is going home. It’s sitting on my teenage bed, re-reading the books that changed my mind; it’s walking through my mother’s garden, and stealing my dad’s tins of beer; it’s looking at the bones and feathers and stones they've collected while I was gone. It’s the late sunset finally hushing the unbearable cicada chorus in the bushland behind the house, while we sit under lights in the back garden, ignoring flying Christmas beetles and picking apart fresh ocean fish. It’s walking across the paddocks, sharp with the sound of noonday crickets, to my sister’s house at the bottom of the hill – the first cute and creaking farmhouse my parents ever bought – with her dogs already out to greet me, and the plums and the mangoes and the mulberry trees all where they've always been.

LOVEABLE: NOVEMBER THINGS

Things that have been excellent in November: 

A new house in a new suburb, with crazy warped floors and a weird log-cabin vibe

Δ

bushwalks with Humble and Scotty

Δ

Talking Heads

Δ

ciders in the sun in our back yard

Δ

eating quesadillas and watching Louis Theroux

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this Coyote Negro ring

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this new shoot from Three Arrows Leather

Δ

any image created by

Dana Trippe

Δ

Chuck Palahniuk books

Δ

stealing flowers from all the crazy gardens along our new street

Δ

these Strong Medicine fire keepers at Sugarhigh and Lovestoned

Δ

catching my housemate

Ben Whiting

 playing live shows around Melbourne

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this scaly-sequinned mermaid-on-the-morph dress from Portmans

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the new Volcom blog

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flicking through

Twoone’s new Psychological Portraits II

on a lazy daylight-savings afternoon

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Moroccan hair oil and coconut body mist from the Body Shop

Δ

the buzzy, end-of-year anticipation feeling that has me daydreaming about drinking tins in the river on the farm and eating long lazy late-twilight dinners and laughing lots with my family …

Δ

SKETCHBOOK: IN A NEW PLACE

This week my usual sketchbook post has jumped over onto the Volcom blog, where it's in the company of radness among posts from artist Jamie Browne, typographer Gemma O'Brien and creative babe Billie Edwards, to name a couple.

Click here to check it out

 ... this is my first post from the cute back veranda of our new house, which is full of excellent creative mojo, strange bold birds, and late-spring sunshine.

ACID EAGLES

Volcom

Tees Me tank

; vintage jacket; rings:

Rejoice the Hands

,

Tree of Life

, vintage; vintage turquoise necklace.

I love nothing more than an 80s-esque eagle print and an acid wash jacket. 

OK, maybe I love a couple of things more ... Scotty, Humble, my Harley boots, Ted Nugent, spiced rum ... but yeah, not that many things. 

GOLD AND GYRFALCON

New prints! 

I've just stocked two limited runs of my favourites of the moment -- Gyrfalcon, and a hand-finished run of Trust the Path -- in my online store here.

Gyrfalcon is a piece that holds a special resonance for me, with the initial sketch drawn on the road in Belgium in anticipation of the arctic shores of Iceland, earlier this year. And for added bonus points, there's a bit of a Yeats reference in there, i.e., The Second Coming, which brings us in a round-about way to Joan Didion's constantly-echoing-in-the-back-of-my-mind book of the same name.

Well, I love nothing more than references that run in vein-like traces to ever greater discoveries, so consider that self, indulged. 

WILDER

It’s a weird feeling, packing everything into boxes, deciding what to keep and what to discard, winnowing away at all that life detritus and accumulation.

I’m a terrible hoarder: in every corner of the house there was something hidden or taped to a wall or safeguarded in a wooden box or a glass jar. There was a piece of ivy growing in a green bottle on the windowsill. Dried paper daisies that I’d collected on the walk back from Nethercote waterfalls during the past summer in Eden. Buckets of urchins on the front porch where my dog couldn’t get them. Polaroids, taken everywhere from Iceland to Barcelona, from Brisbane to Las Vegas. A box of kangaroos jaw bones I bought before Northern this year. Flowers pinned to the wall with electrical tape next to my desk. Leatherworking tools from my dad. Books from my sister. Invitations to weddings, funerals, engagements, christenings.

But I had to sort through it all, and make sure it fitted into a smaller volume than previously. I hope I didn’t throw away anything I’m going to miss.

All because we now live in a new house, in a new suburb, and the vibe seems good. It’s spring, so everyone along the street has amazing gardens, and our little lemon tree still had a couple of stragglers on board when we arrived. There’s a tree on our neighbour’s place that hangs over the fence and almost touches the ground, like a willow, making a little green room at the back of the yard. The floor boards are all twisted and the walls are a bit cracked, but there’s French doors and wooden window sills, and Humble can stand on our bed and stick her head out the window to see who’s come in the front gate. There’s a good Mexican place at the end of our street. Yesterday we found a park with a creek and a dog park and a lookout and miles of native bushland.

And last week I sat at the table on the back veranda and painted and drank and listened to Talking Heads and Notorious BIG until it got dark, and it all seemed really excellent. So I promise I’ll be back again soon, making things and taking photos and chasing ideas around … because, yes, the vibe seems good. 

TIME AND MEMORY

You can't go back home to your family, back home to your childhood, back home to romantic love, back home to a young man's dreams of glory and of fame, back home to exile, to escape to Europe and some foreign land, back home to lyricism, to singing just for singing's sake, back home to aestheticism, to one's youthful idea of 'the artist' and the all-sufficiency of 'art' and 'beauty' and 'love', back home to the ivory tower, back home to places in the country, to the cottage in Bermude, away from all the strife and conflict of the world, back home to the father you have lost and have been looking for, back home to someone who can help you, save you, ease the burden for you, back home to the old forms and systems of things which once seemed everlasting but which are changing all the time – back home to the escapes of Time and Memory.

- Thomas Wolfe

HEY PONY GOLD GIVEAWAY

OK, I have to move house in a few weeks, and some of my compulsively hoarded stuff has got to go.

With that in mind, I thought I'd cut down my stacks of extra prints, posters and original artworks by running a little giveaway on Instagram (@raychponygold) ... head over there and check it out, so I can get these artworks out of my cupboards and onto some people's walls!

The basic gist is to regram any of my work, tag it @raychponygold and #heyponygold, and you're done. I'll close it off at 12pm Saturday (Melbourne, Aus time).

GIRLS, GIRLS, GIRLS

OK, so I have some residual out-of-control-hurtling-through-space feelings that I think come from travelling and then trying to readjust to normal life, and then parting lots and then getting sick, and then being told we have to move house and contemplating moving back to the coast and then deciding to stay in the city. 

I am tired and I feel weird. 

But in among all this life-chaos was a really fun couple of days spent with the other Volcom Ambassadors in Melbourne -- we hung out, had a product night featuring a typography workshop with the super talented and equally ridiculous Gemma O'Brien (@mrseaves101), and put on an all-girls art show.

The pictures above are from the 'Girls, Girls, Girls' show at Juddy Roller gallery, and of my work that was in that show ... What an epic end to that particular stint of out-of-control creativity, connection and laughter. 

Also, thanks

Life Without Andy

for the cute pictures.

A WINDOW ON ALL TIME

Here's a little sneak-peek/experiment/first ditch of something I'm working on in those little slivers of spare time that I occasionally glimpse. Hopefully I can make a bit of progress on this over the summer, and put all the results in the one place for people to look at. 

I don't want to say too much about it yet, just that it's a project that means a lot to me, has generated a lot of familial laughter so far, and is very close to home. 

NOWHERE TO GO BUT EVERYWHERE

Both destiny's kisses and its dope-slaps illustrate an individual person's basic personal powerlessness over the really meaningful events in his life: i.e. almost nothing important that ever happens to you happens because you engineer it. Destiny has no beeper; destiny always leans trenchcoated out of an alley with some sort of Psst that you usually can't even hear because you're in such a rush to or from something important you've tried to engineer.

I'm not so sure about destiny, but I believe every damn word David 

Foster Wallace ever wrote.

And I am noticing, more and more, that I truly get swept along by that kinda ‘life inertia’ that is way too big for me to interfere with. It’s that feeling of being swept in a certain direction, regardless of the byways or side streets or detours I might accidentally head down. It’s life happening to me, totally outside of any intentional orchestration. Or, it's the sense of working really hard toward something without knowing what the higher aim is.

But anyway, I don’t really mind it. 

It’s just a bit of a shock sometimes when I glimpse that higher aim. 

CRIMSON AND CLOVER

I don't know why I still get surprised when I try and draw horses and it's just really goddamn difficult.

Anyway, this one is for a childhood memory of spending all day with my best friend making clover chains to put on our horses. She had a brown-and-white paint who used to bolt hills and run under trees, but was otherwise pure sweetness, and I had a red-chestnut named Mohawk, who had a sun-bleached mane, and couldn't put a foot wrong if he tried. 

It's also for the recent realisation that if I can call that particular memory my own, I was granted a very, very special life.

WANDERING: MONTJUIC CEMETERY

Volcom dress and backpack

;

H&M hat

;

LeSpecs glasses;

Harley Davidson boots

;

Gypsy Warrior concho ring

; all other jewellery is vintage/market/eBay. 

I'm usually most awestruck by natural wonders -- I can see how cathedrals and big bridges are impressive, and I'm yet to see the pyramids or the Taj Mahal, so maybe I'll change my tune then, but usually I'll take a waterfall over a church, the ocean over an historic building. 

Montjuïc Cemetery in Barcelona might just be the exception to that -- we passed it on the drive in from the airport, on our first day in the city, and I couldn't stop thinking about it. It's almost incomprehensible how many families and individuals are emotionally tied to that steep mountainside overlooking the port. 

It's terrace upon terrace of the dead, but more importantly -- and less morbidly -- it's a huge monument to remembering the lives of loved ones, to enshrining the sacredness of life and everything that happens within it, and to pushing back the curtain for a few more years while people still visit the past, the lost love, while they still bring flowers and icons and wipe away the dust and soot. 

Mostly, it's the kind of place that makes you realise how awesome some man-made monuments can be, but it also illuminates the futile and naive frustrations that drive humans to make beautiful things.

 Even if we can't properly comprehend mortality and loss, at least we can make a damn good shrine to it. 

SKETCHBOOK: LOOK HOMEWARD, ANGEL

So, I've been away travelling for the past six weeks, around Europe and a little time back home on the north coast of New South Wales. Most of the above pages are from Italy and Spain, except the first few, which were drawn on my parents' farm, the product of 3am-jetlag-wake-ups and about 10 cups of tea in a row, as I celebrated my reunion with the good black leaves.

I'm now back in my normal world in Melbourne: I wake up to familiar bird calls and distant traffic hums; the tapwater tastes as it should; I no longer have to be alert to train stations as they slide past on the way to work; I know where to eat, where to shop, where to avoid; my desk in the office is the same as I left it, and the computer still has the same quirks; I pass the same people at lunchtime, and on the commute home; and, at the end of the day, the ignition, steering wheel and pedals of my car are all comfortingly

mine. 

Which all sounds entirely mundane.

And maybe it is, but I've realised that I actually thrive on routine and repetition; in days largely constructed of auto-pilot and well-worn paths. Because it is in the spaces around those routines, in the times when I can just let my mind wander, that I explore the other avenues and let my mind expand into different ideas and territories. For me -- and this is, of course, not for everyone -- routine creates a scaffolding of things-I-don't-have-to-think-too-hard-about, upon which I can hang a whole bunch of other weird magic musings and half-spun plans.

So I guess that means I'm happy to be home. At least, until the next bout of restless unease or wretched homesickness for the coast sets in ...

NEVER ONCE SEEN

Backpack, crochet wrap, and pants - Volcom; boots - Harley Davidson; sunglasses - Le Specs.

Frangelico and Coke on ice, old film cameras with perfect light leaks, poppies, passports, and a medium-sized brown dog. Twin Peaks, True Detective and Cormac McCarthy. Long baths with too-hot water, blood oranges in thin slivers, fire at sunset and spiced tea at dawn. John Lee Hooker, Steve Earle, and the Black Angels. Silence, dust, and iron chill. Travel plans, estimations of wonders to come. It’s two days now until we head toward home, and five days now before we take off for faraway lands, full of things we have never once seen before. 

SKETCHBOOK: WONDER SEEKER

FOR THIS MAGIC

On the train, listening to John Lee Hooker – and today John Lee Hooker, only, works for this magic – to make all the people disappear, and the train disappear, and the city disappear … to be replaced by green plains, by hills or trees, by a line of sight clear to the horizon. By solitude, by depth, by something closer to life and nature.

Things that are happening lately -- above and below ...

So, two exciting things – (1) I’m now a Volcom Ambassador, which means lots of new and exciting things are coming up. Also, other Ambassadors include crazy-amazing word-wizards and artists like Gemma O’Brien and Jamie Browne, so I’m in incredible company.

(2) I’m heading over to Europe in about a week, for six weeks – firstly to Belgium before a drive over to Sweden, and then Iceland (!!), before heading down to Italy and Spain.

This also means that as of tomorrow I’m shutting my online store for about two months … so if there’s something you have your eye on, make haste here!

So hopefully in among all this there’s time to start posting on here again – and also time for making some really cool content to share xx 

SEQUINS AND DOOM

Lenni the Label Doom Jacket, Volcom jeans, vintage hat, sunglasses and turquoise necklace.

I'm probably not the best collaborator. I should be, and I'd like to be, as an artist. But after spending so much time working alone, in my own head, in a bubble that at times is so intensely focused I can't even hear what is going on around me, it's a bit hard to admit someone else into that space. And when you're used to being the sole arbiter of ideas in your work, it's a weird thing to try and see someone else's vision. 

So, it's a good thing that Lenni the Label knows how to take an idea and run with it. The Doom Jacket is one of my very favourite incarnations of my work, mostly because, well, sequins and tie-dye. I love how Lenni took this tiny little drawing, that I wouldn't have thought twice about using anywhere, and made it something new and striking.

The only downside is that it's freezing and blowing arctic winds and rain in Melbourne right now, so it's really no time for short sleeves.

But soon enough ...

COLLECTIONS OF THINGS

Lately, I'm having an excellent time buying more books than I can read (on wildflowers, Ram Dass, Del Kathryn Barton), hiding from the cliche Melbourne weather (rain failing at whim, freezing and grey), painting on my hands, collective native flowers, and re-watching the Jurassic Park trilogy. 

ALSO, I've been cleaning up my collections of things (mostly stacks of paper, prints and sketchbooks), and so now I have a few prints with 30% off here, including some old favourites and some editions that I thought had run out. Just use the code PRINTSALE at the checkout.