A Founding Artist of the Permanent Collection
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 !!
Tag: violent sexual assault
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The Ryan Licht Sang Bipolar Foundation and ME!
Artist Susan Todd Martin with her winning entry, “Crossing the Delaware, Well Aware”/ Ryan Licht Sang Bipolar Foundation’s INSIGHTS II/ Zolla Liebermann Gallery/ 2017 Founding Artist Susan Todd Martin with her winning piece “Spring Hearts” at Insights III(Zolla/Liebermann Gallery) 2019 “Deep Running” ©Susan Todd Martin, winning entry/INSIGHTS IV/ Ryan Licht Sang Bipolar Foundation -
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?
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Adventures of a Cross-Eyed Girl
Nobody wants to go thru this… NOBODY.
Even lying down my head still spins… Having a Traumatic Brain Injury is a real drag. Of course it is. Mine was not the worst kind, as we so often sadly see in war, car accidents, shootings.
I was brain injured in stages, blow by sickening blow, at the hands of a man who had pledged to love and cherish me. It is not to discuss him, or my past that I bring this up. It is the aftermath.
I had many concussions already when I suffered a series of falls in 2013 where I suffered another head injury. After that one I experienced vertigo “on steroids”. After coming home from the hospital, I went to bed, hurting from a broken ankle but otherwise ok. I had to get up and pee, so I teetered on my crutches towards the loo. Lo and Behold! I was so dizzy I toppled sideways into the closet doors and crashed headfirst into them, knocking them off their track! And knocking me off mine, you might say.!
Detail of “Flashback 937”, a biographical work about my journey out of domestic abuse… Long story short, its been 8 years. Initially I had Physical Therapy for a span of about 2 years. The vertigo I was experiencing is called Benign Paroxysmal Positional Vertigo, or BPPV. Usually a quick maneuver by the therapist, turning one this way then that, is all that is required for a full recovery. In 99 percent of cases. You guessed it… I was not cured. So I have bouts of cross-eyed misery on a bi-monthly basis.
“Unplugged” a digital finger painting showing my brain’s misfiring connections… You don’t realize how sick vertigo can make you till you endure this joy ride. First I want to puke, then I nearly fall, then I’m overcome with a fatigue so profound that getting out of bed is a monumental feat. And this Rollercoaster just keeps going round. The problem is that I feel so sick that I don’t recognize the BPPV right away. Until I snap a selfie and realize my eyes are out of whack again. Oh, I forgot to mention the blinding headaches… Yeah, those. Ok, the light is hurting my eyes… Back to bed.
Another Night blurs into Day…and on, and on, and on…
Out of the Gutter Art 
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