The Waterplant, mixed media on canvas by Susan T. Martin(sold)
The torment of Immobility
Riding a wave, tall as a mountain, I rush headlong thru my day
One project done, the next begun:
All clarity-no haze.
The transition came, I know not when(wound up on my butt again)
I wandered thru today amazed:
No clarity-just dazed.
When does it happen/Why?
I did not cause it/Did I?
Now huddled under an ocean of covers, immobilized for days
Not project done, not even begun
Just futility-today.
Where do I go to/Why?
I do not cause it/Do I?
I rode a wave, tall as a mountain, rushed headlong into here
The vast Empty, the foreboding, feeling death is very near,
The quiet is not tranquil, the peace turns into fear
Will I find the will to struggle, will my vision ever clear?
I would not wish this on an enemy, nor even onto me
This terrible stuckness, it's inevitability
Knowing it will leave doesn't help it go
The pros say that will, but they don't really know
I will find my meds, somehow take a few
Sleep a dreamless sleep, tomorrow start anew
Hope against all hope, stagnation soon will end
I will be on top to ride that wave again.
Due to the pandemic INSIGHTS IV was pushed forward to October 2021, again held at the Zolla Liebermann Gallery in Chicago. I wish I could have been there !!
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…
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
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.
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!!
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?
“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.
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. 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.
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. 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.
. 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!
I have been languishing here, letting myself fall off the edge of sanity for a while. Is it physical?emotional?spiritual? No, not spiritual, for I feel close to my Creator. I just feel diminished, somehow, like my life’s blood has been watered down. Perhaps when the rainy season ends I will blossom again. Till then, my friend, bear with me…
What Kind of I am I, Digital Art Print by Susan T. Martin 2016
At times the Artist feels so exposed…so unlike the rest…so isolated from the rest of humankind… She express this as ,”Feeling like I am painted Green”.
Isolationism, by Susan T. Martin Watercolor and Ink on Paper, 11″ x 14″ $150.00
Out of the Gutter Art 
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