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For Ares, the Birth of Water [10” x 10”] · Carbon pencil, blackening watercolours, and inks on paper mounted to canvas · [Year 2020–2025]
This painting reimagines the birth of water as an act of warlike creation for Ares, god of violent conflict and raw force, but in love Aphrodite. The skull covers his face as he wears his loving mask.
The work confronts the complexity of origin: how even water—the source of life—can emerge from love, conflict and pain, how power can flood the world with both chaos and possibility. Yet in the deepest blackening, a faint gleam rides the crest of the wave—the quiet promise that what is born in violence can still flow toward healing, growth, or redemption.
A meditation on force, birth, the inseparability of destruction and creation, and the enduring optimism that persists when we face the flood—dark yet eternally hopeful in its refusal to let the water be only ruin.
Inquiries welcome for acquisition, studio view, or related works: blairaiken@raincage.com