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Writer + Visual Artist

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An important aspect of my creative/healing journey over the past two weeks has been play. I’m realizing tht #becausecapitalism I’ve internalized the idea tht in essence, I have to be serious all the time. That being a joyful/fun person somehow means work isn’t getting done. That my worth is determined by how many “important” things I have in my mind. Lately, I’m throwing that away and connecting with my youthful self. I really liked her. She was fun! I’ve been doing crafts, watching old favorite shows, going to the park and exploring in ways I don’t usually allow myself to. Healing the severance between her needs and the ways I’ve adapted to survive. One day I walked across the muddy lawn towards a nature trail I found 5 minutes from my house and once I released control abt how much mud there was everywhere/how dirty my shoes were going to be afterwards, I experienced the purest, most child-like joy I’ve felt in ages. Last night I went to an arcade with some friends and was in tears with laughter all night (even though we only won like 1 game lol). Joy really brings you back to the present. I am committed to honoring the part of myself who wants to play as much as I honor my intellect and drive. I’m asking myself what ways I can bring play into my daily life. What ways I can facilitate joy for myself. Lately, it involves collaging, watching Sailor Moon while I work, using lots of color based on what resonates with my spirit not what is “refined” or “mature”, sketchbook doodling, carrying colored pencils in my purse for long train rides, setting the intention to spend more time with people who remind me to play and overall just reframing how I’ve learned to view life. Putting much less pressure on it and myself to conform to standards I frankly DON’T ACTUALLY CARE ABOUT in the grand scheme of things. There are many studies on how play increases productivity even in the workplace, so this exploration seems to have benefits going beyond personal enjoyment. Prioritizing and filling my joy reserve is something I was never taught, but seems to be an integral part of my personal education, and I’m so grateful for how my days have been feeling as a result.
Inside of my empathy, inside of my capacity to love, inside of my will to live, and inside of the beauty still left in that living. There’s hardly a day in this life when we aren’t greeted with the immense weight of being human. The internet doesn’t make it any easier. Who can know the impact over time of seeing tragedy after viral tragedy and assimilating that information into our consciousness. Not to mention epigenetics and the effects on our descendants. Not only are we responsible for the knowledge of terror in our immediate communities, we are responsible for that of our global family. Our connection means all the suffering we witness becomes ours, just as much as the beauty we witness does. It’s too much for so many people who haven’t developed systems to manage the stress of this energy. We medicate people with deep sadness within them, but the question to ask is not why millions of people are sad, but what disfunction in the world is making them sick? What strategies are needing to be implemented as remedy? When tending to the wound of all this loss, of all this grief, I choose to make it a reminder to examine how I can lean into a more gentle, generous, loving, accepting way of existence in my own body whilst navigating the world. Leaning into more mindfulness. The positive of being connected to the suffering of others, is that it reminds us how much more grace is really needed. How much more we can stand to extend. So many people are carrying histories of war as skeletal memory. The least we can do for each other on a daily basis is offer empathy and tenderness. To recognize the wound in our own spirit as mirror to the wound of the one before us and to treat them with care because of it.
Feeling like now is a good time to bring the textile designing back. It’s been a few years. Here’s a lemon print I did for a hundred day challenge I started but didn’t finish. Check #gisellebuchanan for more old textile work 😌✨💜
Being an artist is terrifying work if you overthink it and remain rigid with your expectations. You can engage in visioning and you can hope that what you envision comes to pass, but the most certain thing is that the course from A to Z- unlike most occupations in our current existence- is completely unpredictable. Someone could follow the steps any of our beloved culture makers and still not reap their specific outcomes. There is a certain quality that remains uncharted and wild. Tailored to the individual. Art is a metaphor for life though. Any truly lived life veers off the path. It has to. Any truly lived life risks asking different questions. People who follow directions rarely end up satisfied, though the numbing and pacifying may dull the honest call of their hearts. Committing to the comfort is much easier than heeding the draw towards the unknown, but what you stand to loose is greater. Even with all the comforts, there’s something missing. An unrest. A hunch that the truth of life is still undiscovered. I’m choosing to show up despite not knowing. Committed to making it up as I go along. Remembering to enjoy the detours when things don’t go according to plan. Following the intuitive compass I came here with. A lot of it may not make sense even to me. I’m learning how to trust in the internal guidance, even when my decisions seem illogical, irrational or risky. There are many outcomes I have seen that I am certain I’m not interested in. That is what propels me forward. What I want for my life is like a gesture drawing. I can glimpse it and feel what it is comprised of, but the details of what or how seem beyond my knowing. I am willing to play the long game. To sacrifice my immediate comfort and gratification.
I’m dealing with consistency these days. The hardest battle I will ever fight is me VS me. Even reframing that is difficult- from a battle to a relationship- between the one who questions and the one who knows. I know I’m ready to commit to myself. To my brilliance. To the life I want to build. I’m also learning how to be methodical about it. How to not be swayed so much by feelings, esp on the days when it feels difficult to continue. I’m learning that I can’t let my mind and what I think be more important than what I do with my hands. A lot of us with untrained minds (and by untrained- I do not mean uneducated. I mean people who lean towards overthinking. Who find difficulty sometimes separating themselves from their thoughts) have to remember that a lot of what we think isn’t us. Your mind is not you. Those thoughts are an accumulation of ideologies, cultural inheritances, and ancestral traumas. All of that ‘stuff’ puts a filter over life as it truly is. What I’ve seen to be true time and again is that consistency, even through times of doubt, will get you further than skill ever will. The ability to keep showing up even when you’ve lost sight of what made you begin in the first place. Even when where you’d like to go feels like an impossible journey. We’ve lost so many brilliant artists to lack of resolve. The challenges are a rite of passage and I’m learning now how important conviction can be. Building the unwavering faith that what you have to offer is worth something, even if you are the only person who believes that for a long time.
Restocked these tees on my website⚡️⚡️⚡️. A reminder of the magic you manifest. I have more wearable and hangable art on the way in a few weeks 💜🌹🦋 Link in bio. #gisellebuchanan
Daily reminder to pick yourself. There are no gatekeepers. Connection is the currency of the new paradigm. The internet is a global network where I can sit in my living room and say/share anything I want to thousands of people around the world. Some people will like it, and some won’t. Though that’s scary, it’s also unprecedented in our history. We have been primed to believe that we cannot begin to do what we want to do until someone we deem important shows up to “elevate” us. Maybe once that was true in the era of radio, magazine, and television, but it isn’t true anymore. It is with our participation that things continue on as they’ve always been.
I think a lot of folks feel trapped by their past incarnations. They feel like because they have existed in the world in a certain way, there’s no room for them to change, no space for them to transform, nothing else they can be. A woman commented on one of my posts and said she’s over 50 and sometimes she feels like what’s the point of caring about her art now, it’s been this long, but because I mentioned that I’m fearful all the time and still make work, she feels like she can do it too. Let me be clear. Historically, self doubt has been my thing. I’m so experienced, I prob have a double PhD in self doubt. I’m always looking at things and feeling like I can do better. I’ve been the person hesitant over the blank page, not wanting to make something I don’t like. Going for months at a time attempting to make something I feel really proud of and failing miserably. But my friend Rhythm (@afrogeniusism) constantly told me while I was in Oregon, “Your okay is someone else’s dream,” so I realize I can’t always rely on my taste to determine whether or not my work is “good” or should be shared. I realized I still have to be generous with it. In the past, I’ve seen that even things I feel uncertain about have shot right to the heart of someone, so that thing I made was meaningful. As a creator, your dissatisfaction is important because it keeps you on the road to betterment. You yearn for your taste to match your skill, so you work to improve. You cannot, however, let your desire to be your best cancel out the wealth of magic and beauty you’ve always had access to and already are. You can decide today to trust in what you contain, and commit to the making of it. Commit to the sharing of it. If you’ve failed yourself, let yourself go a long stretch of time without attending to your craft, you can go back to it right now. We spend a lot of time beating ourselves up about what we haven’t been doing and it’s a trap. It keeps you in a place of victimhood instead of empowerment. Ok, 20 years have passed. We can’t be concerned about that when you have today ahead of you. The life you have left is a chance to go back to doing what you feel you were put here to do.
 
 
 
 
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