We had a bit of a rough roll through central-western NSW recently. Something was wrong with the car, and a queue of different mechanics each failed to diagnosis and fix it. So there was a lot of swearing and sadness in the front seats, fraught phone calls, and tense road-side waits.
One such road-side wait was halfway between the drought-racked towns of Gunnedah and Quirindi, a road lined by cotton fields, with their rows of ghastly, seemingly-dead brown bushes, spilling forth unbelievably white, fluffy crowns. And in the golden afternoon light, as we tried to make it from one town to the other beneath a gently merciless blue sky, the fields were creamy, blushing, soft. The perfect palette rolled orderly and straight out into the night.
So when I started to draw the rain pony, I thought about that light, those colours. I thought a little bit about the sad, tense frustration of those little everyday-life setbacks, held against the backdrop of harrowing, desperate drought. And I thought about the big and small things that ebb around us and distract us and remind us. And the hopefulness of making a wish, of trying to will something to be, to draw up a spell or a summoning or an acknowledgement of what is at the very heart of the thing.
I hope the rain pony brings you some magic.
Rain Pony one-of-a-kind original artwork can be purchased here.
I don't need to tell you why horses are magical. It's about the same as dogs, really. What's not to love about sweet, curious animal friends that try their little hearts out to impress humans, who, by-and-large, are just pretty bad at everything?