SHIRT LOVE SALE

Just a quick note to let you know that Pony Gold tees are 35% off (using the code SHIRTLOVE at the checkout) until midnight Tuesday, Feb 9 (Australian DST). 

Shop here. 

PROCESS: INTO THE MYSTIC

I've just released a new limited edition fine art print (Into the Mystic, here), and wanted to share a little snapshot of the process.

At the end of last year, I started mapping out the individual drawings in rough pencil scribbles, fitting them together and filling the page. But after laying down the initial black ink outlines, I felt a bit disheartened – the ideas were too disparate, ill-fitting, not cohesive enough. 

I eventually added in the first layer of colour anyway. And once the blue was across the whole page, everything locked together. (An aside: that Mint Blue marker is my new favourite thing... I'll be a loyal Posca addict forever, but that blue has convinced me to expand my marker scope).

Anyway, that's a part of the process that I should be familiar with by now. That there's always a point in any work where you're sure the whole thing just sucks and isn't going to work. But it's actually just a lapse in vision, I think. A synapse failure between what the initial, imagined idea looked like, and how the physical, real output is going to manifest. 

Because once the final black layer was down, it realigned exactly as I'd imagined. It was precisely what I'd been trying to pull together, the page I had thought about at first. So, there it was... Into the Mystic. 

 

SKETCHBOOK: FOR EVER STARTING TOMORROW

Things are always in a constant flux between lazy complacency and wired-excited-fiery sharp focus. And that focus needs to be adjusted and readjusted all the time; as motivation is lost, intention obscured, meaning waylaid... But I'm trying all the time to be honest and purposeful in what I create, instead of just running through the motions of what I know I can do. 

And I think the results are starting to emerge...

CHANGE THE DATE

Tomorrow is Australia Day/Invasion Day/Survival Day/nothing for some. 

I don’t want to write about it, but I do want to share some people who have – because there are always powerful, heartfelt stories being told by Indigenous Australians, and they need to be reverberated. 

First, read this from Amrita Hepi – I cry every time I read it, and I have read it a lot. It is true and right; our country is at once easy and painful to love. 

The Fabric Social journal kinda nails it in suggesting that a good place to start for all non-Indigenous Australians is to make this this day a day of listening, and to continue listening to and supporting Indigenous voices. There’s a list of talented women you should be following, listening to, and learning from.

This insightful and intelligent piece from Katie West digs into colonisation and inter-generational trauma via her artistic practice. So important in helping non-Indigenous Australians to understand why the date matters, and why the past is still here, all the time.

Luke Pearson lays it out here, and there's a whole lot more to learn from, all the time, on Indigenous X and NITV. 

For those of you in Aus looking for a way to show your support for changing the date, or to deviate from the head-in-the-sand get-drunk-and-swim approach, maybe go and check out these rallies and events. 

And while we’re on adding more diverse voices to your daily media clamour, a few creatives from Instagram (please pipe up in the comments if you’ve got other artist recommends too) to check out are Otis Hope Carey, Zachary Bennett-Brook, aforementioned Katie West and Lauren Freestone. Also, the Martumili Artists account shares Indigenous art with the most incredible colour palettes. And finally, Thelma Plum is not only a talented singer and possibly the most beautiful lady I've ever seen, but she's also honest and funny and tough.

So: read, listen, learn, appreciate. Remember that when you stay silent on an issue, you condone the status quo. And keep these voices in your head.

 

 

SKETCHBOOK: PURE INTENTION

Over the past couple of months, I've made a conscious decision to cut back on commercial commitments to focus on personal work.

For a while, I've felt like there's been a lack of growth or evolution in my work. Like the ability to channel what is important or significant to me has been waylaid. I've just felt bored, tired and trite. 

So it's nice, now, to start chipping in to that channel again. To read books and listen to music and think about things that are clear, sophisticated and true. Things that are hard to comprehend, that educate my mind and stretch my awareness. And, y'know, to indulge in things that are just straight pure, like listening to AC/DC on a highway drive or holding Bird of Paradise flowers up to the sun. 

Anyway, hopefully this is the start of something new; something growing and fresh and strange. 

THE GLOW

Solsana Shoes Peggy slides; Viva La Body perfume balm; Lovisa Celestial Crystal drop earrings; Tree of Life dress

In summer, on the farm, everything is dusty and dusky and warm. The crackling dry gumleaves and sun-bleached yellow grass underfoot, all much to my dad’s dismay after weeks without rain. The sky is faded; perfect Levis blue, empty, cloudless and bright. My Melbourne skin has gone warm and brown, bolts of platinum are appearing in my otherwise dirty-blonde hair.

Everything has the same echoing glow: my father’s woodwork, the yellowing pages of old books, the swirl of strong cups of tea. The damp fog that blankets the valley at dawn, heralding hot days and high noons; the solid, dusty horse-smell of the neighbour’s tall chestnut gelding, who glows warm and burnished at the fenceline, in the first yellow light of each day.

The glow passes through the cold beer being drunk by the banjo player on the pub verandah, and reappears in the colour of vintage silk dresses, brass buckles, leatherwork, the light in the antique store. It is in the sand, the rocks, the beach; caught in the spindly pandanus leaves. It is in the river, the gravel, the sparkling light reflections that run over the surface. It moves across cow hides, my dog’s eyes, to the whistling baby hawks. In the evening it is in scotch-and-sodas, Rodriguez on the stereo, mosquito coil smoke, muttered conversations.

For now, everything glows like summer, home, warmth. 

SKETCHBOOK: 2016

For my last sketchbook post for 2016, the stills from my little flick-through video, just for a closer look... Hope you all have fun sparkly brilliant new year celebrations, and lots to look forward to in 2017. 

 

SKETCHBOOK: AGES OF PAGES

A little flick through of my most recent almost-finished sketchbook, filled over the past couple of months... it's a weird, colourful collection of thoughts, and seems like a pretty happy way to wrap up a year of drawing!

Thank you for all your support and encouragement this year!

 

SCORPION HONEY

There's nothing quite like idly swirling paint around in a dish just to see what happens. 

GROW SHARPER

When you get to the scrappy burned-out cigarette-butt pizza-crust last-mouthful brain-dead end-part of the year, sometimes it's nice to make meaningless, self-indulgent, pretty things and just think about how nice it is that the sea urchins match the pressed flowers in my sketchbook.

PONY GOLD PRINT SALE

I've just added a bunch of prints to the 'On sale' section of my online store... and there's only a few prints left in each edition. 

Also, my online store is closing on December 12 for a holiday! Thanks for all your support this year, it's a huge, amazing, meaningful thing for me!

DREAM THINGS

Why are the best flowers always the ones that grow kinda wild by the roadside, and are mown down after a couple of days by a suburban neighbour insensitive to beauty? Probably the same reason that the best meal you'll ever eat will be served out of a food truck at midnight in a parking lot in a strange city that you will never, ever be able to locate again. And maybe along the same lines, too, is your favourite shirt when it reaches the perfect level of worn-out softness, right before there's a major tearing incident and the whole thing disintegrates into sad fabric shreds.

Just a little bit of beauty and intensity compounded by fleetingness; these are the things that populate my daydreams. 

Jewellery by Red Rabbit, Sage & Brass and vintage; Pony Gold Dreamer shirt and Wonder Seeker pin. 

SKETCHBOOK: MADNESS, FREEDOM, FUN

Over the past few weeks I’ve been trying to stretch my brain a little bit, to let new ideas flow in, to wander down different avenues. It’s relatively easy, once you find the ‘thing’ that works for you, to stay within the safety of that thing, producing facsimiles of the same idea or style repeatedly. 

I remember being told once that the only thing worse than imitating others is imitating yourself. I’m not really sure about the veracity of that little aphorism, and it’s also kinda hard to distinguish self-imitation from plain straight consistency. Sometimes I can tell; sometimes I know I’m just reproducing an idea and I don’t feel any kind of way about it. Other times I feel that kinda high bright buzz that tells me I’m working on a piece that means something, at least to me. 

But whether it’s self-propagation or just sticking to style, I guess the sentiment is something about not being a hack. 

So lately my pages have been about trying to stretch and grow and till new soil within that ‘thing’ that works for me. It also feels like it’s a preparation for those few weeks over Christmas when I’ll go home to my heartland and all those drawing synapses will recharge, reconnect and resurge. When I’ll sit on my parents verandah in the humid heat and tap my bare feet on the familiar concrete and drink beers at midday and watch for the afternoon storms and listen to the young hawks fighting and draw for madness, freedom, fun… which always brings the best out of anything.

Waratah necklace by Whiskey and White. 

INTO THE ESCAPE

A series of escape-mind little black-and-white pieces drawn in the style of all-time hero, illustrator and poet Don Blanding. 

WANDERING: NSW SOUTH COAST

I can't resist adding another chapter to my rambling documentation of visits to the NSW South Coast (past instalments are here and here). 

In my mind, the South Coast is a distillation of a lot of the things that make the NSW coast so lovely. It's all these disparate wonders clustered together around a little bay. The beaches are uncorrupted and perfect; with white sand and water running from the brightest turquoise to deep clean blue.

A short drive inland, and you're in the kind of bushland that is just so uniquely Australian that it makes your heart sing for the likes of May Gibbs and Banjo Paterson. Big granite canyons rushing with water, wildflowers winding around every rock and trunk, and the specifically snakey feeling of bush undergrowth in this country. And there's nothing quite like seeing a towering waratah bloom in the wild... Seeing something so spectacular existing so quietly gives it an increased poignancy, a spark struck among the dusty grey-green march of the eucalypts. 

Even the farmland is beautiful, soft green rolls of hills leading out to the sea, the kind that make you want to quit the city and take up dairy farming. At least, for a minute. 

Actually, now that I think about it, every time I visit the South Coast I try to concoct a plan that involves me not heading back to the city. But dairy farming might be a bit out of my expertise sphere, I think...