Blair Aiken

 Selected Works

A curated selection from 37 years of painting. These works best represent the core of my practice — confronting masks, following the blackening layers of consequence, and searching for the quiet gleam of hope that remains.

This reimagined Fall of Man explores the fractured moment of temptation, choice, and distraction in the modern human condition. In the central panel, Adam kneels in worship before one of many apples on the Tree of Life, while Eve dances with her own distractions — neither seeing the other nor the looming serpent that divides them. The serpent bears a skull: its mask removed, embodying raw truth we often choose not to recognize.

Below, a discarded female figure from a past temptation stares outward, trapped in memory, as poppies spread across the forest floor like an addictive force. The black-and-white side panels frame the scene like sculptures, showing further figures caught in poisoned desire — one covering her ear, the other holding her tongue — while crosses mark life’s inevitable crossroads.

Inscribed across Eve’s leg: “I have Choice. What does it mean to have Choice?”

A meditation on denial, rupture, and the quiet hope that persists even after the fall.

This triptych explores the profound and paradoxical moment when life and death are no longer opposites but intertwined — the instant one ends so the other can begin.

Drawing inspiration from Joachim Patinir’s *Landscape with Charon Crossing the Styx* (c. 1515–1524), which I first saw at the Museo del Prado in Madrid, the central panel is divided by two opposing forces: a feminine version of Defense and a male version of Offense. These figures show that the journey is shaped less by the event itself and more by how we choose to face it.

The blackening layers trace the slow, visceral process of transformation — the body giving way, the spirit fracturing and reforming, the mind caught between terror and surrender. The surrounding panels unfold like stages of a single agonizing yet inevitable event.

I have faced death many times in my life, including while living in Madrid during a series of bombings. Those experiences deepened my understanding of this crossing. Yet even in this darkest birth, a faint gleam persists — a quiet reminder that every ending holds the stubborn possibility of beginning again.

Dark yet hopeful.