Raeghan Buchanan: A Conversation on 'The Secret History of Black Punk: Record Zero' and Her Artistic Journey

The Truth In This Art is an interview series featuring artists, entrepreneurs and tastemakers in & around Baltimore.

Buchanan uses traditional drawing tools - pen, brushes, sumi ink, and vellum paper - to illustrate stylistically proto-cubist images of important figures in Black history; creating starkly lit, highly modeled portraiture with embellishments of anxiously detailed and decoratively weaved textures. She draws the ancestors to help keep them visible and to honor a shared cultural heritage, as well as to build community with other artists in the diaspora, often using illustrations as counterparts to augment true historical texts about obscured or flattened Black history. Buchanan makes comics highlighting rock ‘n’ roll musical roots in Black culture and focuses specifically on the punk rock aspects of that canon. She gets artistic influence from early punk aesthetic and the political/art movements it drew from, and uses the DIY vehicles associated with punk, such as sloganeering, merchandise, and zines to proliferate information. She created and co-runs @POCtoberArt online, an instagallery that goes live during October and calls for artist participation in drawing Black and POC punk bands, as well as funk and rock musicians, in order to document, practice drawing skills, and create a visual dialog between artists and bands.