My Dead Pony

One of the artists I’ve BEEN obsessing over is raphael vicenzi AKA MY dead pony. We reached out to see WHAT inspires his work and his process.

How did you become mydeadpony? It’s a nickname I chose one day based on a childhood picture of me sitting on a white pony at the sea. When I found back that picture at the time, I realized that the pony was most probably dead. Hence the name.

I guess it does speak of that moment in your life when you really feel that your time on earth is limited and it would be stupid to deny that death is part of life as well.

Tell us about your style. I started so many years ago without any specific skills or knowledge about illustration or graphic design. I just picked up photoshop & illustrator one day and learned it by myself. I had to build my own visual language by looking at how others were doing their works. I can’t say it was an easy thing to do and I have numerous bad works floating in the ether. Given time, I got better, I got noticed, I started to have clients. I’m Still learning on the job so to speak. I recently cut down on illlustration because I want to work with pictures & images instead.

What is inspires your process? A bit of everything I am afraid. Looking at my scanned images, I sometime find a pose, a shadow, an angle that suddenly speaks to me and I start to arrange things around it. I experiment quite a lot even if I suddenly had an idea or half a composition in my mind. I am totally open to happy accidents, which occurs a lot. I see my work as visually sampling bits & pieces of pre-existing images and give them a new life or meaning. I am working to keep the tides of madness at bay, to re-center myself an dig deep into my own unconscious.

At what point do you go from paper to the computer?

I do work in digital mostly but I create many textures by hand, either with acrylic paint or cheap colourful gouache that I scan afterwards. I am quite ok with working with a computer, it allows for a lot more experimentations because you have an unlimited of possibilities and you just have to chose them.

What determines if the piece will be illustration or more collage?

My current mood and if I want to work faster. Illustration work is fine but it takes longer to get where I want it to.

I think I needed a change in the way I was working so illustration is taking a step back for the moment.

What can we expect to see in the future from you?

More collage works, perhaps some animated gifs & more exhibitions. Time will tell.