Soul, Portrait of Josie Aiken [ 40’ x 60” ] Carbon pencil, blackening watercolours, and inks on paper mounted to canvas · [ 2019–2025 ]
The mask of persona.
This is a quiet, intimate study of my daughter Josie — her face turned slightly to the side, eyes soft and looking inward, mouth in gentle repose. The features are rendered with tender precision: the curve of her cheek, the fall of her hair, the subtle light on her skin. Yet the blackening drips begin at the edges of her form and trail downward, pooling at her collar and spreading across the canvas like a slow, protective shadow embracing her.
The blackening layers are not aggressive; they are gentle, almost tender — symbolizing the accumulated depth of a soul still unfolding. Josie carries my soul, just as her sister carries my heart. Her expression is unguarded — open, trusting, yet carrying the first traces of her own mysteries and her own emerging strength.
This painting is a father’s meditation on a daughter’s soul: how innocence holds both fragility and resilience, how the child becomes the keeper of her own light even as the world begins to cast its shadows. The blackening drips echo the passage of time — the love that deepens, the experiences that mark, the quiet becoming that happens while we watch.
Yet in the deepest blackening, a faint gleam catches on her cheek and in the corner of her eye — the quiet promise that the soul remains luminous, unbroken, capable of carrying its own light forward no matter what shadows fall. Behind her she is framed by paintings of a skull and a raven, the skull - honesty, the raven- a boundary walker, protecting her.
Written on the canvas “ My Soul stands behind in the shadows, animating, risk to Fortune”.
A meditation on family, innocence, the unfolding of a soul, and the enduring optimism that persists when we see the child we love become their own person — dark yet eternally hopeful in its refusal to let the light dim.
Dark yet hopeful.
Studio view, or related works: blairaiken@raincage.com
Inspiration & Personal Connection
This painting draws inspiration from Arnold Böcklin’s *Self-Portrait with Death Playing the Fiddle* (1872), a powerful momento mori that has long stayed with me. In Böcklin’s work, Death stands behind the artist, playing a violin with a single string — a haunting reminder that life is accompanied at every step by its inevitable end.
This work is part of my ongoing dialogue with momento mori paintings: not to fear death, but to let its presence sharpen the urgency of truth, love, and the quiet courage required to stand unmasked while time still plays its tune. In Jungian psychology, the psychological mask of the psyche ( goddess of soul ) is known as the persona. Derived from the Latin word for the masks worn by actors in antiquity, the persona represents the public face, social facade, or "outer attitude" an individual presents to the world to meet social demands and adapt to their environment.
Yet even in this dance with mortality, a faint gleam persists — a quiet reminder that awareness of death can deepen life, and that something essential of the self may still endure beyond the final note. And that Josie carries my life forward along with my other children.
Dark yet hopeful.
Studio view, or related works: blairaiken@raincage.com
Dark yet hopeful.
Arnold Böcklin, Self-Portrait with Death Playing the Fiddle, 1872
Soul Animation — Early Test
A gentle animation of my daughter Josie. — revealing a tender, hopeful presence beneath the surface.
In the future the original painting will remain still as the anchor of truth, while the floating world softly emerges around it —