Out of the Gutter Art

Category: bipolar artist

  • Chicken? or Pig? Just Flesh, please…

    Chicken? or Pig? Just Flesh, please…

    “What’s the Deal? Am I a Coward?”

    Where does it Hurt? Unmasking,©SusanTMartin2021W/P

    Commitment to put out my best work…not just work. To push my limits, expand my thought processes…remove boundaries.

    Flashback 937 ©SusanTMartin2017

    I was reading Eric Wayne’s blog , @artofericwayne.com, and he focused a piece on the fine art of Suzzan Blac. (I will refer you to his article and won’t share her work here.) Holy Toledo. The things I allude to in some of my biographical work, the fact that I thought I was being so brave…no. This artist lays it bare…flays it bare.

    She nails the darkest emotions that creep into my nightmares, 50 years after the events. Nothing held back. I admire this work, even if I look at it in secret, as if it’s evil perps can see me, too. As if others can tell that the abuse made me want to hurt someone just like I was hurt. That is the most disgusting part to me, the stain on my soul. That’s the painful truth that I thought my God could never forgive me for…the filthy truth that kept me out in the cold sticking needles in my flesh just to forget for a few minutes…kept me out there for 23 years. I wanted to die, just like I want to kill the perps she pictures so perfectly…

    The Inheritance of Daughter’s ©SusanTMartin2018

    I can’t say I love her work, or even like it, it feels too real to me. It makes me respond like the people I have told my experiences to; that half smile and and nod of understanding while their eyes glaze over with fear and a sort of loathing…like my very words are getting dirt on them. Suzzan is courageous in that she can look her demons in the eye and paint them. Nailing their guilt to the canvas forever. But her pain, her brokenness is palpable and forever on display for both victims and sick minds to see.

    • That Day, Acrylic and embellishment on canvas, Susan T. Martin, 2016
    • Angry Daughter by Susan T Martin
    • Isolationism ©SusanTMartin
    • Reaching Out, Acrylic on Canvas, Beginning Stages, Susan T. Martin 2017
    • “Visionaria”©SusanTMartin2018
    • The Sentinel’s Prayer , stage II,©SusanTMartin
    • The Duck Hunt ©SusanTMartin

    I can’t look too long, and perhaps I should not look at all, for my own sanity. I recognize her need to paint her experiences. I have to also, to get the emotions out and onto the page, onto the canvas where they can’t rip me up inside, at least for a little while. I do this to heal, to repair my damaged psyche until my God repairs me permanently.

    • Inside Voice
    • Cant Quiet Down
    • The Rummage Sale w/p ©Susan T Martin

    I hope that she can find some respite for her pain, too.

    2018 Insights II WINNING Entry! ” Crossing the Delaware, Well Aware”©SusanTMartin2018 in the Permanent Collection of The Ryan Licht Sang Bipolar Foundation

  • Where I am in my Art?

    Where I am in my Art?

    I am Where? In my Art.

        Over here, Over there, everywhere I am, I am.

       Good ol’ Susie made some art-Where art I? Art I? Oh.

       I have never hired anyone to sit for me. My people who people my canvases are The People who people my mind. Here a people, there a people, every where a peep hole, people.

    People . What a funny word, especially when you write it , many times, in the same sentence.

    The same sentence.

    Oh, what a sentence it will be.

    “The Crowd in My Head”.digitally painted paper collage, Susan T. Martin, 2015

    How I do struggle, with all the Angst pushing against the walls of me, like a giant Volcano Person.

    Do you feel me? How can you? I’m over here and you are Way, Way ……..over there.

    This little Ditty is entitled, “The Reckoning”. ©STMartin2011

       I loved my father, my hated father. Oh, how I love him still. He could do no wrong in my eyes. Oh, but how wrong he did. A hater of some, lover of others…my mother? I’m not sure. Sure, they loved. But did they LOVE? 

        I’m sure I did. DID WHAT? loved. Your Father? No! But, yes. But NO , not like that

       I loved him like you love the most beautiful rose-way down in the middle of the thorn bush. So beautiful, so pristine.  20210419_203149SO UNTOUCHABLE, UNREACHABLE, unlovable in his lack of love output. He was so put out, when asked for love. Not as put out as mother, though.cropped-image-4resize-flashback1.jpg

        OH NOOO! Mother was the furthest put out by an outpouring. Oh, no don’t pour it out on HER. Eww, you’re sticky, get your dirty hands OFF… Ew, you are making me HOT! ….Eww, Susan Todd, you are so HUGGY! What makes you so HUGGY?!

      You are JUST LIKE YOUR FATHER. (no, mother!) You are so DIFFERENT from YOUR BROTHER . (but, how mother?)WHERE did you COME FROM? (you, mother?) 

    WIN_20170815_11_19_02_Pro
    Reaching Out, acrylic on canvas, Work in Progress, Susan T. Martin 2017

    Sent from Mail for Windows 10

    Did they really LOVE?

    Do YOU ? Really , Really ??

    “Synapse Miss Fire” ©SusanTMartin2019
    ” Flashback #937″ (detail)©STMartin2018

  • A Neighbor’s Dying

    A Neighbor’s Dying

    I have a special place inside my heart for fellow addicts. Those without the ability to get clean, without a relationship with God, without a friend in the world. Carrying the weight of the huge monkey on his back.

    I talked to him from time to time, tried to impart some nugget of wisdom, a ray of hope. He would say, “I wish a train would hit me”.

    I remember that level of despair. That loathing for anything good in my life, because I did not deserve it. Hating my very being, a degraded piece of trash, discarded by society. Abandoning all hope, embracing the darkness.

    The pain is excruciating. It is no wonder he wished for death.

    I live across the street from his Grandma’s, where he would stay, in her laundry shed-shooting heroin. I saw him go from a funny, kind of hillbilly guy to a wretch with bloody scabs oozing down his arms. The last time I saw him he said he was really sick this time, he thought he had Covid. Well, it wasn’t Covid. First time the ambulance came, he had OD’d. They brought him back.

    This time, though, it isn’t the dope… They took him to hospital with pneumonia and a Blood infection, his very sad Grandma told me. He won’t be coming home, barring a miracle.

    I just hope they have made him comfortable…and that he doesn’t suffer for long. Poor, poor, Chris… I guess maybe your train finally came. I have said prayers for him and his family, and for everyone sick and dying…

    I will dream tonight of my Monarchs. I saw a caterpillar tonight who had just connected himself to the bottom of my wheelbarrow. He has probably changed into a chrysalis now. Soon he will totally disappear into a liquid, before miraculously turning into a beautiful Monarch, breaking out of the chrysalis and flying free!

    I hope you fly free too , my friend. I will see you again, one day soon.

    UNCHAINED, UNCUFFED, Mixed Media on Board, $400.00 (Available)