Japanese ONI, demon mask
Self Portrait, Artist [ 24" x 36" ] · Carbon pencil, blackening watercolours, and inks on paper mounted to canvas · [ 2016–2025 ]
The mask finally removed — ONI’s grin remains
In this self-portrait, the artist confronts the easel as both mirror and battlefield. The figure stands at the canvas, brush in hand, face half-emerging from shadow—eyes fixed on the viewer, yet turned inward toward the work itself. The blackening layers spill across the surface like spilled time, obscuring and revealing in equal measure.
No masks remain here: the unmasked self stares back, scarred and tattooed by 37 years of daily ritual, by survival, by the relentless drive to strip away one layer at a time. The easel becomes the crossroad—where pain meets persistence, where "mistakes" are embraced as the true medium of discovery. The hand holds the brush like a weapon and a lifeline, painting the self into existence even as it dissolves into ink.
A meditation on the act of creation as confrontation, the artist as both maker and subject, and the quiet optimism that persists through every darkened stroke—dark yet eternally hopeful in the endless return to the canvas.
Dark yet hopeful,
Studio view, or related works: blairaiken@raincage.com
Lovis Corinth’s 1903 self-portrait
Inspiration & Personal Connection
This painting was inspired by Lovis Corinth’s 1903 self-portrait, which I first discovered while living in Europe. In Corinth’s original work ( Kunsthaus Zurich ), the artist stares directly at the viewer with bold intensity while his wife, Charlotte Berend-Corinth, poses nude with her back turned, facing a canvas — a powerful meditation on the act of creation itself to expose and understand life.
In my version, I placed my wife Kara into the composition but on the canvas behind, with her face unfinished, and raised my brush, staring straight at the viewer. The gesture is both homage and personal statement: a moment of unmasking where the artist, the model, and the act of painting are no longer separated. Just as Corinth blurred those boundaries with expressive brushwork, I continue that dialogue — honest, intimate, and unafraid, and the coloration here not golden positive, light but muted, deep shawdows..
Dark yet hopeful.
Studio view, or related works: blairaiken@raincage.com
Dark yet hopeful.
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