Out of the Gutter Art

Category: Transformation

  • I WONT GIVE UP!

    I WONT GIVE UP!

    Water Lady, doodle 2023
    Me, NOT GIVING UP!!

       It is a NEW DAY.  I had an epiphany of sorts, a dreaded weigh in at my Doc’s, which blindsided me with the astronomical increase in number! I’ll tell you a rather large secret: I’m only 12 pounds away from the HEAVIEST I’ve ever been.

    “Growth” detail of mixed media painting by me, SusanTMartin2019
    Original art, SusanTMartin2026
    “It’s not the dog in the fight, its the FIGHT in the dog!!”…Mark Twain
    “Crossing the Delaware, Well Aware” mixed media in the Permanent collection of the Ryan Licht Sang Bipolar Foundation 2017
    Rock On!

      Almost exactly a year ago I had a total right hip replacement, added to a my other spinal surgeries, catastrophic falls and lifelong intractable pain. I thought I was so healthy- I had lost 40 pounds on Keto, I had energy and was ready (I imagined) for the surgery.

      Holy Toledo! Wrong answer. The recovery was horrific. PAINFUL! COMPLICATIONS, and an idiot Physical therapist who let my leg fall off the table because all my major muscles on that side had been cut. He told me to lay my leg gently to the side, as I was lying on my back, knees bent. He was there to guard and catch it from overextending. Unfortunately, for me, he completely turned away at the exact time. The pain so intense I screamed and nearly fainted. I already had a grade 3 tear on my hamstring on that leg, with a partial avulsion, which in layman’s terms basically means my thigh muscles were nearly cut through and detached from my butt bones. So already excruciating.

      All this is a preface to the fact that I let myself go and tried to eat my way back to health. Ice cream was my private nurse. Self pity my companion. Doom scrolling, couch-potatoe-ing were my favorite firm of entertainment. Nearly a year with minimal effort at physical therapy, and a fall that totally smashed my face right before the hip surgery. I have turned into a train wreck. I do not recognize myself.

    It was a VERY rough year…

       But I am DONE with that.

       NO MORE!!!

      I rejoined Weight Watchers who I used to lose 70 pounds in 2016. Tonight I tracked my meals for the first time. And tomorrow I’m going to sign up at LA fitness gym. I may not get “skinny”, but, damn it, I WILL GET STRONG AGAIN!!

      Thanks for listening! Join me on my journey!!

    Onward and Upward, Matey! (and DOWNWARD weight numbers!!!)

  • Back to the Story:

    IT’S HOT, I’M TIRED..

       Night fell, and we were ready by Burt’s golden chariot. What an amazing vehicle it was. Huge, glistening, bearing his name proudly on the door in script as the owner/operator. This was no drugged-out short-timer. No, Mr. Burt was the real deal, hauling real steel. A true gentleman, he helped me up into the cab. Awkwardly, we loaded Spicedog, and then Danny swung aboard. I sat in between the men, and a bit behind. This truck was a castle compared to the first, and Burt took pride in his home on the road. His wife’s picture held pride of place on the dash, a buxom woman with honey blonde hair who smiled warmly at the camera.

       Danny and Burt hit it off, so I curled up in the back with Binky Boots Bouncer Callahan, my calico kitten. This was really an amazingly laid-back kitty, maybe because life had become crazy at such a young age for her, she just adapted. Danny had fashioned a tiny harness and leash for her, made of shoestring, it seemed to work well. I slept, hard, the exhaustion of the past 5 days felt like a month. When I woke we were rolling into Las Cruces.

       As we rolled into a lot for the night, the truck stop offered showers, and food. We had been dependent on the kindness of strangers, and although I tried to hide from God, I think he had mercy on a pair of delusional addicts. In retrospect,  the fact that we were never accosted or assaulted thus far was miraculous in itself!

       Our time with our generous friend was soon to end, another day saw us entering Arizona. New Mexico had been dry, but mild during the day. In this climate the temperatures plummeted after the sun went down- well began layering our sparse choices of clothing.

      Our bond as a couple has faced challenges, yet our love and dedication to each other and our little family remained intact. This was in spite of withdrawals from shooting up cocaine, and staying drunk 24/7. My mind had cleared, my health and stamina had improved on our journey.

       All these changes for the good would later be sorely tested. For now though, our future seemed hopeful, and our days were full of excitement and freedom. I was finally actually seeing the beautiful landscape, and a few collect phone calls to my Mom meant that soon we would have a few dollars for necessities. My relationship with my parents was far from good, the heartache travelled even through the telephone lines. This made me cling tighter to Danny, to my growing kitten and our faithful pup.  We would make it, I felt more sure than ever…

  • Dead Tired

    Oh Joyful heart, where are you today? From so much light I now feel only pain.

    Where did my optimism run away to hide,

    Why now this dread that cannot be denied?

    She thought she had come away unscathed, from the turmoil, the abuse

    …and rage.

    But disease was just below the surface all along, and now the Piper must be paid…

    Oh senseless one, unreasonable and blind, don’t mind your feeble, fluctuating mind, because as your marbles leave you, they are cast: to the wind and to infinity, at last.

    She had packed up all her winter clothes, put away her childhood toys, went to bed under many uncertain memories

    Must…hold…on. Must…hold…fast.

    Faith is a slippery pig. Love is a memory.

  • Faces I see, Dreams of Me

    Faces I see, Dreams of Me

  • Round One: Let the Game Begin!

    Round One: Let the Game Begin!

    I Will find the WILL!!

    My Founding Artist painting: The first of my works to be placed in The Ryan Licht Sang Bipolar Foundation’s Permanent Collection!

    Fittingly titled “Crossing the Deleware, Well Aware” it shows my journey from despair and being held back by my past to shedding the overcoat of depression and walking into the sunlight of my artistic future! I based this title on the little “George Washington” Dude lurking down in the bottom center of the painting…See his funny hat?

    My “Doubting Suzie” Ways

    Ok, friends, here’s the deal: I quit working as Frank Strunk III’s intern last week. Why, when I was enjoying learning from him so much? Why, when my mind was blooming open to all kinds of brilliant metal working techniques, and my mind was being blown by his artistic vision?

    “Why in the world would you do that Susan Todd?”, Susan Todd asked Susan Todd.

    I figured out the answer to that yesterday, although the reasons I gave Frank were that

    A. I need to focus on my work I already do, cause it’s what I do. (Huh?)

    B. I am doing a piece about my Dad and I’m an emotional landmine.(Hmmmm….What?)

    C. I have been invited to a big event and need to focus.(Nope.)

    D. Too many scattered efforts make Suzie nuts. (Now THAT makes sense)

    Did I do the right thing? I wasn’t sure, because I really want to make metal art. I’m frequently making impulsive decisions and regretting them. He was generous with his time, his tools, opening his shop, his art and heart to help an emerging artist. And I bailed, just when I was really digging in.

    An Emotional piece about my Dad…Work in Progress. “Dead Men Tell No Tales”©STMartin2022 (started last week!)

    I hate how my Bipolar Disorder makes me run Soooo Hot and then drops me on my doubtful butt. But it did, and here I am. Have I done what I said I was going to do? Well, yes. Yes I have. So that is good, I really have benefited from focusing on less! I have finished one of the pieces for the new INSIGHTS V call and started 2 more. I entered the Art of Possibilities Show in Missouri with 3 works, and finished 2 Grant applications plus am working on a third. And this third one is a doozy.

    THE IMAGES ABOVE are of ‘THE DREAMING FOREST’ ©STMartin2022 (A New Work!)

    I didn’t get the last three I applied for, but I’m getting better all the time at writing them. This new one I am having trouble writing, but that is ok. I AM REACHING OUT!! Oh, and I finished my Art Business course that the St Pete Arts Alliance gave me a scholarship for!

    So, have I been working, and trying and FIGHTING for myself?

    Yes! YES!! YES!!!! Making connections and forging ahead, breaking new ground in new and exciting directions. Learning new marketing skills and remembering old ones I had forgotten. Benefiting from taking little risks and meeting new artists.

    Now that I have written this I am astounded at all I have accomplished in the past 2 months. I really am a creative Powerhouse! Cutting thru the choppy waters like a PRO! Go Suzie, Go Suzie!

    There is NO limit on my creative potential! I can SOAR! Look at me go!!

    one of my commissions from 2021
  • Painting My Heart Out

    Painting My Heart Out

    Woo Hoo ! I am an artist WHIRLWIND again! Hang on, cause art is flowing out of me in a torrent, and I need more hands. I am happy to be out of “funk town” for a while! I entered six shows in the past month and now have 5 paintings accepted into these shows . Four of the five shows. I can’t believe how things snowball. The piece above is a Work in Progress, one of my Surrealist pieces, with a working title of Angry Birds, a little pun on the silly game people play on their devices. I’m rethinking that right now, I may put people off by that. But who cares if I like it, right? Naming Art is the Artist’s privelege. Kind of like children; you made it, you name it! And here’s a fun little twist…how many Birds do you see?

    I painted what I believe to be my best piece as far as figurative art, it’s an acrylic mixed media piece which is a statement piece about justice and human trafficking…It is named “Stuck in Traffic (Framed) and I will post it, and the one mentioned above as soon as I sign them in a few minutes here… Be patient, I had to lie down for a minute. I decided a while back that I must sign my work before I post it online… Silly, really, you can’t stop the thievery no matter what you do, if you decide to post your art online. I recently read a piece considering the benefit vs risk of putting your art online. If you decide not to you are missing out on reaching millions of people, perhaps billions. If you want to sell your art, and/or share it with an audience, then the risk is one you must take. Unless of course you are going to let it spead just by word of mouth. Then it would take 100 years telling 5 people a day to reach 182,500 people, if they did not tell anyone else. If each one told 5 others then… wait a minute, you get the idea. It would take a long time.

    Impressionism is my dearest love, and I hope one day to paint like Pissaro, or maybe Gauguin… Of course I have my own style, and I concentrated more on my brushwork in this piece, and multicolored skin to show my feelings rather than accurate realism. I especially love the dramatic shadows, I tried to be brave! Like I’m not passionate enough, right? I’m proud of the results! I will list all the shows I’m in in the next few days, with their websites and dates…

  • IN the Mirror

    IN the Mirror

    recognizing my BIPOLAR self image

    “A Big Beak”…by Susan T. Martin

    I’m in “Wonderland” right now. Been here for a week or so. Time seems to be inching by, my head too heavy to lift off the pillow. Not sick physically, I’m just…just…what can I tell you? I have had some unknown trigger going me headlong into a timewarp. Into a place I never ever wanted to return to…

    The Recurring Bipolarism of self image…

    Is the reflection REAL?

    My art, from it’s earliest inception, has contained 2 sided faces. Always compelled to create a smiling side juxtaposed to a moody/dark side. Even before I consciously knew the face was symbolically my own, before I had ever heard of mental illness or anyone called manic depressive illness bipolar, I was painting my double sided inner person. I have doodles and sketches from grade school where this manifested…it was a necessary act to portray my protagonist self this way. This was the girl inside of me, who would soon find ways to hide from physical reality in altered states…

    The inner struggle raged on in imagination…detail of “The Sentinel’s Prayer” by Susan T. Martin2018

    After the traumatic events of my young life had begun, my self-image became warped and twisted. My mental despair manifested itself in self harming behavior: anorexia/bulemia, punching walls, suicide attempts…to this day, nearly 50 years after the onset of the abuse, I still cannot eat without feeling ugly afterwards.

    • Susan Past ©STM2018
    • In Plain Sight/ Insane, Right? ©Susan T. Martin”The Party’s Over”
    What keeps me from total despair when the flashbacks and darkness come is knowing and believing that this WILL PASS. The excruciating pain WILL END. I place this fact very deliberately and firmly into by mind every time I recover from these spells and after years of therapy, medication and learning Faith, I have overcome total despair. To RISE AGAIN AND PAINT ANOTHER DAY!!!!! I HOPE THAT DAY IS today!!
  • Birds of Paradise

    Birds of Paradise

    A short story by Susan T. Martin…

    She was never very confident. Her mother said she was ‘pretty’. She did not believe her. She didn’t want to be ‘pretty’, anyway. No. She wanted to be ‘breathtaking’, achingly ‘beautiful’, devastatingly ‘gorgeous’. A ‘real heartbreaker’, ‘homewrecker’, a ‘ten’. A ‘perfect’ ten.

    Like Tracy. Her best friend with the huge blue eyes and pretty lips, nice hips and long, long hair. But she was none of those things that Tracy was. She had a sneaking suspicion that her mother was lying about ‘pretty’ as well.

    The boys did not say she was pretty. Not that she liked them. Only one. Joey. He was super smart. Super duper smart. Almost as smart as she was. But smart didn’t rate very high in her circle of giggly little girlfriends. It especially didn’t rate with Tracy who thought being smart was ‘stupid’ and ‘a drag’. A drag with a roll of the eyes added on.

    It seemed she was just doomed to be a ‘bookworm’, which was a term that also elicited an eye roll from Tracy and the gigglers.

    Oh, how she loved her books. She longed to go to the exotic places depicted in her ‘National Geographic’ magazine that her dad had ordered for her. He thought she was beautiful, but not in the ‘Tracy’ way. No, dad said she was beautiful for her brains, her intelligence. This made her feel very good. Her and her dad would walk in the garden and he would point out different creatures and plants for her to name, from her study books in the library. Oh, that’s a salamander…or, That one is a chickadee. His eyes glistened when she got this right, especially his beloved songbirds. He could whistle just like them, he knew every call. She could not whistle, because her tooth was missing in the front. He said he would make sure the tooth fairy knew that she had to have a mouth that would whistle for her next birthday. It was coming up soon, so she was excited.

    Something bad happened that next month, tho’. Her daddy had a heart attack and died, and mom said he had gone away to a better place, in heaven. She didn’t get to tell him that the tooth fairy gave her a whistle, or that she could now tweet, almost as good as he did. She didn’t believe that heaven business, her dad said that heaven was a place where the birds lived, not dead people.

    She spent a lot of time alone that winter, walking alone in the garden. She would whistle all the time, and learn about new animals and birds. She dreamed about her father every night, sometimes she would sleepwalk.

    One cold, rainy February night she had an especially bad night. In her dream her dad was locked out of the house. He was calling to her, from the garden, and in her dream she wanted to fly down to him, like a beautiful exotic bird. She knew if he saw her, all arrayed in bright and glorious feathers, that he would be saved, and they would be together again. If only she could just fly down there. She started whistling and flapping her arms, and running to the window, still asleep, she fell thru the glass with a crash, landing unconscious in the garden below. Her bedraggled wet little body, so twisted and broken, was rushed to the hospital.

    They said she would not be the same if she ever woke up. But they did not know that deep inside her amazing little mind, she was just fine. Her and her dad had both learned how to fly, and they tweeted happy little birdsongs back and forth as they flitted about a magnificent garden.

    ‘my year as a bird’ digital painting ©Susan T. Martin 2021