Out of the Gutter Art

Category: digital art

  • Keep Your Head…and Mine Too

    Keep Your Head…and Mine Too

    This slideshow requires JavaScript.

    You open your eyes in the morning, and briefly it feels like a regular day. A “before” day. We need a name for that now, something catchy, that we don’t mind saying. I do mind saying “before the Pandemic”, “before Covid”, I suppose because I am on sensory overload about the ” situation”. I want to be safe, follow the guidelines, but I also want to talk less about it!!! 

    I am getting used to the “new normal”, a phrase that seems to be a paradox. If it is “normal”,  the very definition suggests it is not “new”. I just want to ‘breathe’, and ‘let go’ of all the must do’s and need to’s, to float above it all mentally. Isn’t that a lovely thought?

    .  Remember the movie “UP”? I hope you’ve seen it, if you can be your inner Child while you watch; you will love it. The whole premise of a bunch of balloons carrying one away into the sky… Did you ever have a scary moment as a kid when your older brother told you to hold onto something or you’d float away? I kept imagining that I wouldn’t be able to hang on when I was so high the fall to earth would smush me, and that I’d be afraid to let go when I was still low enough to survive. What a lack of confidence in oneself, even in an imaginary setting!!!

    .  Who was the cartoon character who said, “What a Maroon!” every time the main character did something ‘dumb’? I’m thinking it was Barney on the “Flintstones”. It was said so often that it became this background sound, and up until today I couldn’t figure out what he was trying to say about Fred. Now that I sounded out the word to type it, I am thinking he was calling Fred a Moron.

    I’m a wee bit disgusted about not being paid my winnings yet for recent painting, nor have I received payment for the sale of it. The Show and sale ended May 30th, and here it is July whatever…Poo. The organizers must know we are all starving.

    . Anyhoo… I still have time to draw a line or make a dot. So I’ll write words again afterwards. Words. Just not the “P” word, or the “C” word, or “19”.  I’m going to share some of my digital art with you tonight, hope you crack a smile or frown a frown, just have a thought about the wonderful gift of creativity! Goodnight all.

    This slideshow requires JavaScript.

    This slideshow requires JavaScript.

  • Sick, Sick, SICK OF IT…

    Sick, Sick, SICK OF IT…

    That’s a cheery title, eh? Yes, I’ve been wallowing again, in me muck. (as the Brits’ say.) I guess that’s what they would say, actually, because I have never heard Benedict  Cumberbatch say he was wallowing in his muck. Now that I think about it, I’m not sure I spelled that dashing young man’s name properly either… So now I can really wallow in it…me Muck, that is. (why this godawful computer wants to capitalize Muck is way beyond me, it also capitalizes Young. See?

    WIN_20191030_20_16_17_Pro (3)_LI
    “A Wee Bit Peckish”,detail

    By now you have most likely discerned that this post is winding itself around my consciousness like my fairy python-mother, to the end of pinching my head off like you would a bug. Not me, I don’t pinch bugs’ heads off, no way. I freeze them. Especially grasshoppers which grow to monstrous  dimensions here in South Swampland. I do not freeze them out of malice, or hunger, just a matter of survival for my broad leaved tropicals and dahlias.

    This slideshow requires JavaScript.

    .  In actuality I find grasshoppers rather endearing and one of my first works of art in 5th grade was of a lovely grasshopper. That was before I moved from the Allegheny Mountains just north of the Mason Dixon line to South Florida’s semi-tropical jungle of behemoth bugs. It really fakes you out down here, cause the hundred tiny-baby black and yellow-striped grasshoppers you see in your yard today are tomorrows’ five-inch long yellow-green monster’s that decimated your mango trees in ten minutes flat.

    My hunting technique is to take a few (10) plastic grocery bags and race around my property swiping those suckers off my plants with ninja-like swiftness until I have about 20 to 30 per bag. Then, whoosh, seal it up real quick before they can turn those bottomless black orbs of eyes towards you to make your will turn to water. They plead in tiny high pitched squeaks: “noooooo” and “pleeeeze”. Don’t listen, whatever you do, because it’s all lies, if you looked like a plant they’d mascerate you like it was their aim in life.

    This slideshow requires JavaScript.

    .  After the big seal of the bag, I dash into the kitchen and whisk them into the freezer and slam the door. Then I get another bag and do it all over again until grasshopperville is no more. It may seem cruel, but when I used to raise saltwater fish and animals, the really top fish guys said that is a humane way to euthanize a fish, so I just assumed it would work as well with my grasshopper friends.

    Are We All Infected?
    Feeling Green, marker on board©STMartin
    a happy Chimerical ME!

    .  The only downside is when you tell your auntie to help herself to a glass of iced tea and she reaches in your freezer for some ice cubes. When you hear her unearthly screams you know one of your critters has escaped his grocery bag tomb and decided to gasp his last in the ice cube bin. Sometimes you pull out the whole carcass, other times it’s just a random leg in the bottom of your glass.

    .  Ok…any questions? That’s where I’m at, I hope y’all are keeping as tight a grip on your sanity as I am! On that note, Cheers and Bottoms Up!

    more self portraits 026
    my idea of an artistic selfie!

     

  • The Unveiling!

    The Unveiling!

    Shall I call it “UNBAGGING”? I told you that you would never guess my source photo, in the last post’s images. Well here it is:

    WIN_20200409_19_42_18_Pro
    Can you SEE now?

    .  Here’s the deal: I was ready to take Kleo for her daily walk, mask on, prepared to face the outside world. I had just finished watching (another) horrible newscast about the indescribable suffering going on all around the world.  They had pinpointed the lack of PPE(initials we now know by heart that stand for Personal Protective Equipment), and the total disregard for life being shown by leaders who shall remain nameless,. The glaring situation that faces those on the frontlines who work to save the sick and dying was very much on my mind, so when Kleo and I stepped onto the street I was shocked by what I saw.

    This slideshow requires JavaScript.

    .  Up and down my street, in front of every house, were little pink plastic bags, big enough to slip a hand into. And they held a single folded newsprint page with a small sheaf of advertisements tucked inside. I had been upset by these exo-system destroying little plastic bags before, being tossed all over the ground by secret eco terrorists each night under the cover of darkness. I mean- No ONE HAD ASKED FOR THESE! NO ONE HAD ORDERED THESE, OR REQUESTED THEY BE SCATTERED ALL OVER CREATION!!!!

    This slideshow requires JavaScript.

    Well , excuse me, there was SOMEONE…

    Like I said, this had already bothered me, but now? NOW?!?

    This slideshow requires JavaScript.

    .  I had just viewed nurses in New York City going to work using “gloves” fashioned using sterilized newspaper bags, shopping bags ( using clean garbage bags for goodness sakes) to shield themselves, and their CHILDREN, AND PARENTS, AND STAFF, AND NEIGHBORS, AND YOU AND ME from the virus!!! So here I was, rushing up and down the street, very angry, very sad, and self-righteous over this waste. I wanted to SCREAM AT THE TOP OF MY LUNGS AT THE INJUSTICE OF IT ALL!!

    This slideshow requires JavaScript.

    I may actually have screamed something, or at least shouted into my frayed cloth mask, which successfully muffled my words…I marched home with Kleo falling behind, tilting her head curiously, as if to say, “Mommy, I didn’t poop yet!?!”.

    WIN_20181220_16_56_56_Pro (2)
    But why, Mom?
    a-search-for-sue-013
    coooooookkkie!!

    I paid her no mind, but kept up my March all the way to my couch where I threw the offending bags on my couch, and made an angry video about the whole mess of emotions I was feeling!

    .  Then I watched said video, and the old, grouchy Lady with the pink bandana (who was wielding pink plastic bags like a weapon) -well, she just looked pathetic. Very Ineffective.

    9E549B81-C0D0-426C-86B7-9568A779C64A
    Trying to look very old…
    75531728-2A99-45B2-910B-9231C823004A
    Great Grandma Alzira Angeline Alexander

    Therefore  I did what artists do best:I made meaningful art, and in doing so I made a statement, a loud statement… A SHOUT FROM THE ROOFTOPS, A SCREAM AT THE TOP OF MY PHOTO EDITING VOICE!!! 

    “HERE YOU MONSTERS! Here you UNTHINKING BOOBS!!!!”    “SEE WHAT I THINK OF YOU!!”

    This slideshow requires JavaScript.

    “THERE WILL BE A RECKONING” Because my friends, it’s not up to me with my little pictures… No, the GREATEST ARTIST, the One True God, says in the BIBLE

    ” …AND HE WILL BRING TO RUIN THOSE RUINING THE EARTH!”, Revelation 11:18B

    .     Now with the situation reframed, and with me letting go of a job that my Higher Power is doing, way, WAY better than I ever could, I can be happy again. I can use the little pink bags for doo-doo bags for my Ragamuffin Dogs, and be eco-illiterate myself…or, I can make a collage with them and use the adverts also! Ooooo, this will keep me going till nightfall, anyway!!! Then I will have to search for a new, fresh bee to toss into my bonnet! Another vital quest for justice for little furry creatures!!!

    This slideshow requires JavaScript.

    .  ONWARD, AND UPWARD MY FRIENDS!  Let us keep pushing on to better tomorrows!!!