This painting, “Ad Infinitum”, is a commentary of my journey from Alcoholism, Drug Addiction, Sexual Assault, Domestic Violence and Childhood Sexual Assault, Self-Loathing and Suicidal Ideation to a Life of Freedom and Acceptance of the person I was. As a person with Rapid Cycling Bipolar Disorder, and PTSD , this journey was arduous and excruciatingly painful.
This work has been juried into the ” 2021 Women In Art”, an online show honoring women artists for the month of March, at Las Laguna Art Gallery, Laguna Beach, California. You can view this show online at laslagunartgallery.com March 4-27,2021 Description of Work: As a Bipolar Artist I have always portrayed my duality in my work unconsciously at first, way before any diagnosis. I painted this as an entry to The Ryan Licht Sang Bipolar Foundations Insights IV Art Show in 2019, the theme being Self Portraits. As such all the women in the image are different facets of the Artist. On the Left side of the image in gilt and green vines we find a woman hanging on a stake, paying for her crimes.
Center Bottom is the past self (as I described initially here). We see that she is dark overall, and notably, wearing a mask and full of confusing puzzle-like pieces and disjointed lines. In fact even her hair is like the pages of a book that holds her many secrets. There are signs she has been in bondage, chains, shackles, even some kind of demon-like being can be seen lurking inside, still biting her(shoulder region).This collection of symbols indicate not only abuse, but also the bondage of addiction and codependency. She smiles up at the healed self who is lifting her out of the mire. Her condition had become so dire, that we see a tiny version of self scrambling up the stairs in her forearm to escape, with a look of terror on her face. That is not a shirt the lower self wears, it is her skin, which has to peeled off to reveal the clean inner person she is becoming.
Around the lower self’s neck, central to the painting we see a venomous snake, usually a symbol of evil in art, for centuries. But rather than striking, it is benevolent ( after all it is pink!) An “inside joke” on the Artist’s part, as she was bitten by a Pygmy Rattlesnake on July 5, 1985 and then by a Copperhead on August 10, 1995, which very nearly cost her her life.
BUT SHE LIVED, and now that all the other venom of her past is purged, SHE IS LIVING A JOYFUL LIFE NOW! As far as the child in the right-hand corner, that needs no explanation, nor does the love on the face of the Healed Self.
This Mixed Media Painting by Susan T. Martin is Entitled, “A Wee Bit Peckish”
Using Simultaneity and Surrealism I morph my feelings and emotions into birds, fish, and an outpouring of faces, each expressing the myriad emotions I go thru each day as a person living with PTSD and Bipolar Disorder.I wonder how many animals you can find? It’s like a little joyride into my manic mind!
How true, how true that Pennsylvania Dutch saying is. I squander my art endeavors, rushing from this deadline to that, frazzled, befuddled and unsatisfied. That may be what drove Van Gogh insane, the constant turmoil to do better. I am making the presumption that perhaps the rapid cycling Bipolar Disorder that I enjoy(!) was somehow effecting him, too. Many artists share this mental illness, I know that The Ryan Licht Sang Bipolar Foundation has held Insights Art Exhibitions, to establish a permanent collection of works by artists who are effected by this disorder. I am proud to be one of the Founding Artists of that collection, and proud to know these beautiful people who have done so much to further research in the field.
Three years, three works of my art in this collection. It blows my mind, just as my art has been blowing peoples minds since I was a child. How easy I forget, and wallow in my mire. That is part of this disease also. The dark days, when no amount of internal dialogue can push me out of bed, out of the bleak landscape in my head. Do you think Van Gogh, or Matisse, or Dali had such dark times? What about Francis Bacon, Pollock, Warhol ?
Then why do I feel so alone in my efforts? Yes, I’m sure the worldwide pandemic has a dampening effect, on artists as well as everyone else. Perversely, I also treasure the isolation it affords me. No one can chastise my late hours, or visit to be aghast at the paint on my floor, on my walls, on me. I think I need to get out of the house more, go walk on the beach, visit a park. All things strange and alien nowadays. I know this will pass, I have been in counselling and under proffesionals care for my Bipolar Disorder and PTSD for nearly 30 years, I take my medication every single day, because I have been all the way down into the abyss and made friends with the monsters lurking there. Only to find out that they all wanted me dead. I don’t want to be dead. I can fully understand why I did, because this pain is all encompassing. I feel each cell screaming at me to give it relief.
Not too happy, guys…
The only thing I can do is paint myself into a painless reality, a utopia of color, a sweet dream of lavender and silk, a field of gold. When sleep won’t come I will disappear into the garden that flows out of my pen, winding its way into sweet fantasy-lands where no one is mean and there is no such thing as loneliness…
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.
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!!
Who said that? I hate you, whoever you are. Because I…WANT…PERFECTION!
The Earth keeps spinning on it’s Axis, and my mind keeps spinning like a mouse wheel. A recent medical issue charges my thoughts with negative ions, even with semi-positive news reports… Nothing to see here, folks. Let’s keep moving…
Relevance…that’s the Key!
You do understand, don’t you? I stay up all night, retouching retouched areas-only to get out my tiny sander in the dawn and set that banshee loose…Reducing to dust all my night’s toil.
Struggle…Fight…Grapple
It doesn’t look like this now!!! AhhhhhhHaaaaHaaaaa Haaaaaa!!!!
This Beauty is one of a pair of Cabintet from a large entertainment stand, The Other is outside, drying…
I have to get the mix just right: a smidgen of anxiety, a pinch of hunger, a good dose of caffeine and just about 48 hours without sleep and *BAM*! The NY creative lightning strikes! Tonight was the night, today was the day, cleaning off my museum pieces with fine brushes, repairing and sprucing up the shelves to display new work… Giving my custom painted floor a deep cleaning in preparation for the faux Renaissance tile I will be handpainting there.
I am pulling out all the stops while the proverbial light is green for GO!! I pulled out all my nearly finished projects for a big push to clear the studio, putting all the months (years?) of pondering into real execution. Clean the brushes, check all the supplies and paint paint paint!!
As it should be, so it shall be. Inside myself I am whole, where I am not broken. I am lonely in a great big crowd, but never alone when I am here. Do you feel the radio waves frying our brains? Or is that just those pickles I ate.? Let’s go with the pickles, the other is too tough to contemplate.
Out of the Gutter Art 
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