Out of the Gutter Art

Tag: PTSD

  • Turning My Art on it’s Head

    Turning My Art on it’s Head

    ” Trying to turn heads while my head is turned…”

    In Plain Sight/ Insane, Right? ©Susan T. Martin”The Party’s Over”

    Hi, fellow Art fanatics! I’m very glad you are able to visit me here. This isolation is wearing heavily on my battered little brain. Please tell your friends who love a good laugh, interesting art and insight into head injury coupled with a Bipolar Disorder diagnosis. It can get loud in here! I welcome the visitors, and also love to read your comments.

    The fall I took 2 weeks ago has left a dent (it’s OK to laugh, I am-even when it hurts!) in my work production. I am dealing with BPPV* symptoms and they are fierce. I finally realized my exhaustion is more than depression again, so after forcing myself to clean house at 1:30AM, I performed the Eppley maneuver. I bent to the left this time, as I could actually discern more pain and pressure when I leaned that way, and sure enough I incurred violent vertigo and headache. The therapy helped: I am able to post this and am enjoying a cup of hot cocoa, with mini marshmallows.

    This inner drive I have, the endless pressure to do more, do better…it can be so toxic when I am battling a disability. It makes me furious that I am limited in any way, and coupled with my overwhelming need for approval causes me major doubts about my ability as an artist. It’s so crazy, because I can see the art I put out-endlessly, constantly, incredibly- day after day. I see that I do things no one else can do, I read the praises people post, I hear the kind words of the curators and collectors…but I still feel like a child…that little girl with a broken pencil hiding her picture from everyone.

    I have come to expect these days of self doubt. Days when the critics come out of the cheap paneling, surrounding me, poking me with long, blue fingers: “Is that all you can do?” ” What’s that supposed to be?” “My brother draws better than you…”

    What the &%#$? is going on? Why must my mind be tormented as well as my body? Why?

    Why?

    *BPPV stands for Benign Paroxysmal Positional Vertigo which can result from a Traumatic Brain Injury.

    I know why… it’s a battle that has raged down thru the ages… And it may be that secret ingredient that pushes us to create something, some day, of true and lasting greatness. Will I? Perhaps, perhaps not-but I will never quit trying. Maybe that is my best work yet.

    “Welcome to the Sunshine State, Mr. Ponce de Leon!” ©SusanTMartin 8/10/21
  • Calling Down thru the Centuries

    Calling Down thru the Centuries

    • “Visionaria”sold
    • “Exquisite Aloneness” work in progress
    • Reaching Out, acrylic on canvas, Work in Progress, Susan T. Martin 2017

         Tracing a Trail of Tears…

       The Trail, so long ago. Now see the traces of hot tears down our dusty cheeks. Feel the same blood pumping thru these veins as in those:

        Red like the purest ruby, and it will pour forth if you cut us. Your words cut like the edge of a knife, a ruby red blade across a human throat.

       Do not gloat, you who know the glut of Buffalo meat, blood red heart still beating in hand, Son of man.

        A man of the Sun, of the People, the Black Hills, the Antelope Valley…The Mohawk mountains, man.  The salmon-colored sands of the Sonoran Desert.

       We chased the sidewinder, ran with roadrunners. Our feet bled walking empty highways, empty citrus groves, riding empty boxcars.

       We are women, tired and beaten. Down the tears ran like the scars on our back, scars on our heart.

       Where are you, raven-haired brother? Do you hear me , calling across the centuries?   

       Does my black mother bear my sorrow, black Mother-bear?

        Alone now; my voice reaches all the way around this broken bowl of me

       The wind washes the empty, clay basin of my soul…

       I am not whole-I wholly am not holy, man.

       Holy man, what is better than this sweet sorrow?

       Or more bitter medicine than this abiding pain, Medicine man?

  • In the Arms of Angels: Rise Up

    In the Arms of Angels: Rise Up

    Taking a Memory in a New Direction

    I’ve been living with PTSD for a couple of decades now, many years. Many years… There has been miles of road covered in my healing journey, at times I feel as if I have dragged my body over continents of rough terrain. I am road weary and saddle sore. I have a sense of who I could have been, if my road had been kinder. This does not grieve me as much as it used to, I don’t mourn as much, but I do get caught up in the quicksand of the past now and then. These days I know what tools to use to work myself free, even if I do drag some dirt along for a while. I have a support network to do a deep cleaning when needed.

    But my trauma never truly ever leaves. It just gets rammed back into it’s footlocker faster, and I keep more cinder blocks around to pile on top. When the stink seeps out I open the windows, pull out a fresh canvas and paint till the air clears. Ahh, how clarifying. Washing the walls of my mind with ‘Spic and Span’, that excellent cleanser of bygone days. When the walls of my childhood home were turning brown from nicotine, Mother would open a box, make a batch of suds in a bucket and with some hard work (and many smoked cigarettes) she would turn those rooms from gloom to gleam! (Damn, I can turn a phrase !)

    Some of us are just born ad men (and women)

    Anyway, that’s what creating my art does for my broken mind. So, when this call came out, “Rise Up, Remembering 9/11” I had serious emotions bubble to the surface. My memories of that day are not of one who was there, or who lost a loved one, a family member, a daughter, son, beloved husband or wife, a dear friend or even a colleague. My memories are the memories of collective, enormous grief and horror.

    Detail of Flashback 937

    How could this horror be reframed in any meaningful way? Dare I even intrude on someone else’s trauma to say how I have healed? What could I show, thru my art, that might help someone hurt one smidgen less? I have just come out of creating my most painful work to date…a painting you watched come to fruition here and on IG. That piece tore my heart out and tears are mingled in the paint. This piece was going to hurt to.

    I remember sitting in the darkness of my lonely room, watching videos of the towers, before they fell. Feeling guilty for watching, but needing to see the reality of what they were experiencing. Watching them clinging to window frames as the billowing jet-fueled fires raged at their backs. I was their mother, their wife, their sister, tears pouring from my eyes, mouth open matching their silent appeals for a miracle please GodpleaseGodPLEASEGODSAVETHEM SAVEUS SAVEME!!!

    Detail Flashback 937Reworked

    Then their hand is forced by the pain, or they make their decision and leap…l e a p…into oblivion. I gasp…time seems to stand still as they let go…slowly, they fall, like beautiful leaves in a September wind, suitcoats flutter, white shirts billow, sensible shoes on beautiful bloody feet, top side up, bottoms up, arms akimbo, embracing the darkness rushing at them at terminal velocity. I am them, What do I feel? Do I feel? Will I feel? Bye Mom, bye Johnny, bye Laura…

    I close my laptop, sobbing silently, drying my snotty nose on the bedclothes…I feel guilty,dirty, like I just did drugs or had sex. Was I depraved to watch that? Was it forgivable. Maybe it was like the people who watched me get beat, not calling for help, just watching. No, I could not have helped, no one could. Wait a minute…

    I could help now. I could change the picture! It was like a time machine! I could send an angel! A strong, loving , beautiful angel-radiant and shining- to intercept her in midair! Because that’s what really happened, right? Yes. YES!

    This is Rising Up! A New Direction!

    It is a Work in Progress, and a humble beginning, but this is what I missed that day…this is what really happened…

    *note* John5:28,29 this gives me comfort*