Circe, Poisoning [ 30” x 60” ] · Carbon pencil, blackening watercolours, and inks on paper mounted to canvas · [ 2015–2025 ]
The mask of enchantment and the poison we offer others — and ourselves.
This painting reimagines Circe in a modern, intimate version of the myth: she lies face down on the bed, shadowed head raised and turned toward the viewer, hair wrapped in a soft blue towel as if just out of the shower. Her darkened expression is calm and calculating, eyes sharp and focused, lips slightly parted in concentration as she plans her next move. In front of her sits a tablet, its screen glowing faintly, displaying digital tools calling up the recipe for something far more subtle than an ancient potion—poison conceived in code, in chemistry, in quiet thought.
No goblet appears; the act of poisoning is not yet physical. The blackening drips trail from the tablet's edges and her fingertips, spreading slowly across the canvas like digital ink bleeding into paper, or the slow seepage of intention into reality. The drips coil around her arms and towel, saturating the scene in shadow—symbolizing the inevitable transformation she is designing: men turned, desire twisted, power exercised without ever raising a cup.
Circe is radiant yet remote—goddess of enchantment remade in the everyday, her beauty a quiet weapon, her planning a form of seduction that needs no voice or touch. The tablet is her new wand, the towel her casual disguise, the bed her private laboratory. The viewer becomes the unseen Ulysses—already drawn in, already at risk—by the simple act of meeting her gaze.
The work confronts the complexity of modern enchantment: how persuasion can be silent and digital, how the planning of a trap can be as intimate as a late-night scroll, how the giver of change is herself changed by the act of creation. The blackening layers echo the gradual surrender—the idea already taking form, the consequence already spreading.
Yet in the deepest blackening, a faint gleam catches on the tablet's screen and in the corner of her eye—the quiet possibility that even in this modern poisoning, something essential remains: a choice, a reversal, a reclaiming that can still unfold.
A meditation on power, cunning, the thin line between preparation and poison in the digital age, and the enduring optimism that persists when we face the cup being planned in silence—dark yet eternally hopeful in its refusal to let the poison be the final truth.
Dark yet hopeful,
Studio view, or related works: blairaiken@raincage.com
Inspiration & Personal Connection
This painting draws inspiration from John William Waterhouse’s *Circe Invidiosa* (1892). In Waterhouse’s haunting work, Circe stands at the water’s edge, pouring poison into the sea with cold, deliberate grace — the moment of vengeance and transformation already unfolding. The psychological mask of the story of Circe and the poison is that of the archetypal enchantress or femme fatale, representing a complex blend of fear, desire, and the transformative power of the feminine "shadow". The poison, acts as a psychological tool that blurs the line between human reason and bestial instinct, mirroring the inner nature of the men or women who consume it
In my version, I imagine her *before* that moment — the quiet, intimate pause just prior to the act. Hair wrapped in a towel, tablet in front of her, she is preparing the cup she is about to offer. The blackening drips flowing from her fingertips trace the slow, inevitable spread of consequence, the dangerous allure of power, and the thin line between seduction and domination.
The painting is symbolic of the end of a relationship — that painful threshold where love turns to poison, intimacy becomes control, and one must decide whether to offer the cup or walk away. It captures the psychological weight of that choice: the moment desire curdles into resentment, and transformation becomes both weapon and self-inflicted wound.
Yet even in this dark preparation, a faint gleam of hope— a quiet reminder that every ending, however bitter, still carries within it the possibility of awakening and reclamation. As we must understand that others also wear masks, and that is their right.
Dark yet hopeful.
Studio view, or related works: blairaiken@raincage.com
Dark yet hopeful.
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John William Waterhouse, Circe Invidiosa, 1892