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 //