If you would like to see my artwork in real life, you can visit my home studio (by appointment only). I exhibit in different locations around UK and DK Contact me via livsmalerier@gmail.com or via direct message on Instagram: sussi.louise to learn more

Sorry, but at the moment I am closed for commissions.

tirsdag den 28. december 2021

Rupture of the human mind

 


Since that is all I have

No sea-fret breath

no gills no dorsal fins

All I have is this rupture

Recultured draft of stories beyond words

Just 

Space between the abyss-like crack ripping open

Ripping time off

Stuck in salty coagulated blood plaster-like ripping 

All the likes 

All the ruptures

Sand dissolving under my feet on beaches I can no longer visit

Water stinking crystal clear into eyes that no longer can see them 

Just feel them

Crisscross cutting wintered skin 

Writings of longing


tirsdag den 30. november 2021

'Seachanger - Wave Weaver' New Book Out Now

 'Seachanger - Wave Weaver' the second book in the Blue trilogy is out on December 1st 2021


I have created another book of poetry and flash fiction. It is as seashaken as the first, but in this, the focus is on the changing. Change of circumstances, perspectives, a debate of how we perceive reality, realities; time and times past and future. 

As ever the healing point of origin, for me, is the salty sea. But not any sea. Sea I can touch. The poem 'Not my sea' gets into the meat of that. 
This is also a book of irreverent flippancy and unapologetic swearing at all things cancer and illness. Not a pity party. More like a KBO fest.

The book starts with the poem 

And So it Begins

with a moonrise
kissing the edges of the eastern sea
harvest sized
Red horizon seeking me

I am right here,
as ever.

Open arms.

Ready for the first rush of night

This is how it always begins
with a moonrise,
by a sea
and my open heart



We all weave our tapestries with what we have got. If you can't make it pretty, might as well make it good fun. This weaving of words is coloured by a year of funerals I could not attend, coffee I drank and all the beautiful people who helped us through the last few years of navigating cancer and COVID restrictions. 

Disclaimer: If you are triggered by talk of grave illness, swearing, death, and making sense of all of this using dark humour, blue language and growing fins, scales and possibly gills. THIS IS NOT FOR YOU.

However if you like a bit of Scandinavian WTH,  bedazzled with Tjasa Owen Seascape painting magic... buy it. Read it, write to me, call me, just don't turn up at my house, that would be weird, dude.

£ 11 
You can acquire this salt cut collection directly from Galleri Livsmaleri by sending an email gallerilivsmaleri@gmail.com international shipping £4 UK shipping free

Or order via

Https://www.waterstones.com/book/seachanger/sussi-louise-smith/9780995751248

Or

https://www.grovebookshopbooks.com/product/seachanger-wave-weaver/




Tjasa Owen   www.tjasaowen.com


mandag den 16. august 2021

lørdag den 10. juli 2021

søndag den 25. april 2021

Kraken poetry



We do not eat the Kraken

All that water looking ironclad
Steely grey against the lightning storm above
Only movement 
our chests as we breathe
Not a wind but for the air we let out
It's unsettling this mirroresque sea against 
the raging of skies so high above we 
can only see the flashes in the loom,
Hardly a boom reaches us
The slow flattened surface disfiguring that half crested moon
reminding us of a golden octopus we once tried to eat in Greece
Arms contorted
Now white against the black płate it had been thrown onto
Menacing it looked
Blaming
I remember thinking that had this creature been the size of a house 
it would be exactly what I imagined the Kraken to be
I have a soft spot for the Kraken 
Naturally, we didn't actually eat it
One doesn't eat magical creatures
Monsters or not, they deserve respect. 
And time
We eat our words, our hearts, our pride. 
But not the Kraken

#sussithepoet
#bluemind
 

torsdag den 1. april 2021

The Humans Who Inspire Me: Tjasa Owen

www.tjasaowen.com
An American seascape painter who continuously inspire me by playing with my colours
ok, not MY colours, but the colours that vibrationally signify my true self
Maybe yours too?

Anyways, I do not know how, but in a previous life I think Tjasa might have been my favourite muse, an angel in disguise, possibly a mermaid sister
and
Every
Single
Day
I feel seen when I look at her paintings.
It is a really beautiful thing, feeling seen.
Invisibility was always a theme of mine growing up. 
Double-edged sword kindafink
wanting desperately to achieve that perfect level of clear water blend-in-ness
cherishing the ability to disappear
but also hungering, starving to be seen. 
Really seen
As the person I was. 
I had a strong sense of self even as a child
and I knew I was not truly seen.
Loved, but not for who I really was. Does that make sense?

Anyways, what happens sometimes, 
when I see certain constellations of colours, like the ones Tjasa use,  
is that a song forms in my head
a seashanty-like wave of nodes and words kissing my synaesthesia brain
like the painting above did:
'Sea Grit'



 

fredag den 29. januar 2021

Piano I Ching

Piano I Ching

There is a glorious smell of piano in my study
Throwing me down the path of basement lessons with cute 'klaver' teacher as an impressionable teen. 
No nodes could be taught,
I was dumb as soup. Which is why first two teachers gave up on me.
I could hear though. 
Mozart and Beethoven, a salad of Straßes and a side bar of Beatles. 
Bitter sweet memories form as I sit here looking at the remainder of a 100 year old piano split to kindling. 
The I Ching of change right here on my table. Our piano always sang change. Stuffed into the 70ies home bar area in the white house dad bought when we were too broke to stay in the one before. And the one before that. Still, he wanted his daughter to play an instrument. We had tried the accordion.
It weighed more than me and had it after I drew blood on its clasp falling over it 
That. And the fact that I have no left right coordination. Was a leftie, turned right in first grade. A thinly disguised attempt to 'normalify' the last of the Mortensen kids. Having failed to succeed with the other three, all stops were pulled. They failed. Instead I could both write with and not write prettily with both hands. And if I had ever had any, the ability to know what was left or right, how to coordinate the two with hands feet and eyes, went. My exceptional father saw the clumsiness as a sign I was his ... Flat footed fella he was. Walked like a goose. Although, feeling loved by your dad is great, goose walking ambidextrous five year olds do not fare well in rural seventies school yards.
My foot to shin aim was perfected soon enough. Unfortunately, this would not help me 10 years later cloppering the pedals on the sad bar piano that had replaced the atrocious accordion. Black gentleman he was, still smelled of smoke and bodega. In times of strife dad could always find a bargain. Wolfgang I called him. Ivory fingers, at least a handful of the slices of dead elephant missing. The old man was injured. Mum had him tuned once. That would do it tight dad said. 'It is not about being in tune, it's about knowing the dance.' Explained a lot. Half the family couldn't carry a tune if it were a feather the other had perfect pitch. And then there was me.

#sussithepoet


mandag den 18. januar 2021

Dancer

 

Dancer

It was the way she danced. 

Her touch on the floor so fleeting it seemed inconsequential. 

She had asked me to come. 

She needed a dancing partner, she said. 

Admiring her now, I know that was not true. 

This girl needs nothing when she dances. 

Not music not gravity, definitely not me. 

Inconsequential me. 





søndag den 3. januar 2021

All at Once


 All at once


Those clouds gather 

to please me, I am sure

Tease shapes in pure pink allure

pregnant bellies ready to burst

frosty flakes in the billions


All at once I am four again

Sat in window waiting. 

Vision fading as snow was invading

every crevice of my little mind

potent anticipation brewing

innocently queuing behind ice on 

thermal glazing

Waiting

for the first cover to settle. 

The blank sheet to paint on

With my sticky arms and 

pipe cleaner legs

Angels


Silent angels


Before anyone else was awake 

The sea of white was mine to sail

New coasts to conquer

dunes to wander 

Alone

With every flake

Unique to me and itself


Pink clouds against dark morning skies 

The call so faint only I could hear

clear crystal summoning of 

small people

still believing in miracles

 

Belly full of awe so raw

just one sound remains

The gestational wait in 


Silence


The most beautiful sound of all

is the call of the soon to be born

falling snow


I am old now

Bones wary of the walks I have walked

the talks I have talked 

Thoughts I have thought


But all at once 

I am four again

Listening for the snow in the

expectant growth of the pink clouds

against the night blue sky


Silent snow

bridging time

with the ease of truth descending

not ending here but mending the cracks

that I have made

and those that were given me

In the silvery pink diamond mornings

All is good

All at once

#sussithepoet