Self Portrait, Artist [ Dimensions: 24" x 36" ] · Carbon pencil, blackening watercolours, and inks on paper mounted to canvas · [Year 2016–2025]
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.
Inquiries welcome for acquisition, studio view, or related works: blairaiken@raincage.com