∆ GOING UP THE COUNTRY ∆

Photography: Amanda Leigh Smith ∆ Model: Thalia Kelly ∆ Styling: Tashina Hill ∆ Assistant: Ginger McCabe

Shirts: Mate Vintage ∆ Jewellery: Cobracult ∆ Leather bags: New Church ∆ Painted skull: Medicine Collective

See the whole shoot here.

Two years ago, I was sitting at my parents' dining room table, inking in painstaking fine lines, leaning over a sketchbook until the muscles in my neck started seizing up and giving me migraines. I was watching the clock to see how late I leave it before I got up from the table and went to work.
I was totally compulsive. I had to finish a new work every day. Some of them were starting to come out well, I thought, and every now and then my hands would accurately interpret what my head wanted to communicate.

Despite my compulsion to draw all the time, I didn't know why I was doing it. Or what I was trying to make. Or where I wanted to go with it. There was a sense of inertia that I very much still feel, the need to just keep creating at any cost.

But I can say one thing for sure. Two years ago, in the late-winter dawn of my parents farm, I would not have ever thought that my artwork would be out in the world, being worn by people I'll never meet or see, and -- no less -- being shot by one of my favourite photographers. It's a huge privilege and honour to share in such an amazing creative community, and I guess it's part of the why, what and where I've been trying to get to for the past few years.