For Ares, the Birth of Water [ 10” x 10” ] · Carbon pencil, blackening watercolours, and inks on paper mounted to canvas · [ 2020–2025 ]
The mask of the unity of opposites.
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.
Dark yet hopeful,
Studio view, or related works: blairaiken@raincage.com
Inspiration & Personal Connection
This painting draws inspiration from Alexandre Charles Guillemot’s *Mars and Venus* (c. 1820s). Guillemot’s work shows the god of war and the goddess of love in a tender, intimate embrace — a rare moment where Ares lowers his guard and allows himself to be softened by Venus. The story of Ares (God of War) and Aphrodite (Goddess of Love) acts as a psychological mask for the unity of opposites, representing the intersection of passion and conflict, attraction and destruction, and the duality of human emotions. It explores how intense desire (love) and raw aggression (war) are often intertwined and mutually reinforcing
In my version, titled *Ares and the Birth of Water*, I imagine the power of their union as so intense that it creates something new — water itself. The blackening layers trace the collision of opposing forces: war and love, destruction and creation, rigidity and flow. From their meeting, something elemental is born — water as life-giving force, as tears, as the medium that both separates and connects.
I am not entirely sure why I call it the “Birth of Water,” yet it feels true. Perhaps because the power of their love feels generative enough to birth an entire element — something fluid, essential, and capable of both gentle nurturing and overwhelming force. Through this work, I explore how the meeting of opposites can create something greater than either force alone, and how even the god of war can participate in an act of profound creation when touched by love.
Yet even in this moment of passionate union and elemental birth, a faint gleam persists — a quiet reminder that from the clash of fire and desire, something life-giving and renewing can still emerge.
Dark yet hopeful.
Studio view, or related works: blairaiken@raincage.com
Dark yet hopeful.
Alexandre Charles Guillemot, Mars and Venus, c. 1820s