Synkroniciti is thrilled to welcome Houston visual artist Abby Buchold with three evocative works in gouache and ink. Learning to Fly, winner of our Expectations cover art contest, is an incandescent self‑portrait of the artist at five years old. Rather than pairing herself with a cute or comforting creature, Abby rides astride a giant crow — a bird of intelligence, agency, and uncanny wisdom. Its feathers and leathery feet are rendered with exquisite detail. Surrounded by plush pink clouds, child and crow appear ready to slip the bonds of earth and explore the twinkling night sky.
Abby often begins her paintings with gouache washes, following color rather than plan. She recalls simply wanting to play with this vivid pink:
“I just throw down color and I see what I see. When I drop a lot of big expectations and let them be somewhat formless, then the bright color comes out, the brightness comes out.”
Not all of her washes carry the intrepid femininity and hopeful cast of Learning to Fly. In the Clouds offers a darker vision: black clouds tinged with brown and blue, heavy with rain falling around a small girl — not a self‑portrait this time. The girl, drawn in ink, is colorless and vulnerable. She hunches into the landscape, eyes closed as if wishing herself elsewhere. These clouds feel like depression made visible, internal weather rendered external. The land presses upward while the rain bears down, compressing this dear child. We feel protective, drawn toward her need.
The final piece, This is the Goodbye, is equally serious. A brown wash reveals two female figures lying beside one another, one holding the other’s hand to her chest. Flocks of birds pass above and below, presaging transition.
“This one has to do somewhat with the death of my mother but also just wishing parts of myself goodbye that are no longer there… releasing the expectations I had about my life.”
Here, the browns become the women’s hair but also suggest a landscape. Abby’s washes frequently serve as externalizations of internal terrain — emotional weather made visible.
We are delighted to present these powerful works alongside an in‑depth article, Awash with Color: Learning to Play Again with Abby Buchold, exploring her journey from librarian and corporate worker to artist reclaiming her creative identity, and her healing of childhood trauma through making art. She offers luminous insight into her process.
Experience Abby’s artwork and learn about her story and process in Synkroniciti’s Expectations issue, Vol. 8, No. 2, available here: https://synkroniciti.com/the-magazine/purchase-individual-issues/.
Abby Buchold is a mixed media artist. Working with gouache and ink, her practice is exploratory, drawing inspiration from nature. Buchold begins each piece intuitively — laying down washes of color and coaxing the patterns that emerge into vivid, unexpected imagery. This organic process mirrors the themes at the heart of her work: nature, resilience, and healing. Her paintings invite viewers to slow down and look closely, discovering worlds that feel simultaneously familiar and dreamlike — grounded in feeling as much as form, and alive with the quiet wisdom of instinct. A former librarian turned researcher for an executive search firm, she lives in Houston with her husband and three cats. When she is not painting, Abby loves dancing and exploring the country by RV. She dreams of mounting a solo art show and creating an artist’s collective.