About
Name: Blair M. Aiken
Artist Description:
Aiken is a North American contemporary artist- inventor, and entrepreneur.
He develops complex dark representations of his experiences, desires, concerns, and feeling utilizing blackening watercolours , carbon pencil, and inks on paper which are then mounted on canvas.
Literally bringing the environment’s darkness into his images. He is constantly experimenting with new processes, and other eco safe mediums to connect art to the human condition, and the environment.
Believing art has a deep role to play, in the imagining of the most basic and complex global human issues.
His compulsive 36 year daily practice often working on several works at once has the dual purpose of scientific inspiration, often inventing ( a highly specialized art form ) while in the fog of creating a single visual art work sometimes over many years. Allowing him to exorcize the demons, and scars of a complex life experience, living in over eleven counties, at the same time. Fusing the inspiration and experience of a life long obsession with Japanese Ukiyo ( floating world) screens, multi panel alter pieces, black and white figurative, fashion, and art photography, classic sculpture, and painting into a single or multiple set of canvases to create an evolving experience rooted in the darker side of his mind’s experience into something he needs to communicate, and, or create.
He begins with a blank paper and no plan, a few circles become a ruff figure, and then another, and he begins to weave it into a story adding elements over time. He allows the watercolour to drip and promote mistakes and what was meant to be. This allows what is inside to grow into a larger and larger image, that is never intended to be perfect, nor commercial in any way.
He uses figures as complex emotional abstractions creating two dimensional sculptures of life, love, desire, betrayal, death, lust, and social disruption, to find a new way to express what he can not describe.
Why the darkness?
“The easy answer is my life hasn’t been a huge bowl of positive. I start with a white canvas and over time it fills and darkens, like a full life the darkness and mistakes come along the way, but evolve into beautiful and full of moments I can appreciate”
Why all the skulls?
“ We all wear masks to hide who we really are, to me the skull is the real person behind all we hide from the world” “We are hidden by the many masks we wear on our public face.” I have faced so many lies! About how the universe works and how people act with each other.
The Japanese say we have three faces/masks.
The face we show the world.
The face we show those close to us.
And the last one we never show, which is the truest reflection of ourselves.
Instead of representing death or loss, skulls represent the important Eastern concept of emptiness, and truth.
Emptiness is considered to be a quality of the universe. This means that phenomena we experience have no inherent nature by themselves; instead, we attach meaning to what we experience. It’s basically saying all events are neutral- but we choose to magnify them in our minds.
Why the crosses?
The crosses help tie together the images as well as symbolize an intersection or a cross roads, that we all face like removing the mask, we need to reach these crossroads.
So the skulls, crosses, and the dark subject matter ( even the carbon emissions) are meant to balance each other in the images and remind the artist and the viewer to not let past experiences cloud the future.
He is the co-founder, and co inventor of Kara Technologies Inc., ( https://www.karatech.com/ )a company and technology focused on creating new fundamental chemistries to allow for a greener world, by allowing for the greener upgrading and refining of oil and also oils replacement ; biofuels created from non food feedstocks without the production of CO2.
He is the founder and Chairman of the Rain Cage family of companies. which are first of a kind gears in the system of energy transformation, allowing People, Governments, Financial Institutions and Corporations to see - and profitably surpass - their Environmental and Social Goals.
He is the founder, Chairman, and co inventor of Rain Cage Carbon, ( www.raincagecarbon.com ) which has pioneered CCRU, or Carbon Capture and Reuse technology which converts and captures emissions from industrial sources and directly from the atmosphere into high value products, and novel green energy sources.
He develops art and energy transition technologies, after surviving life, and then surviving the 9/11 attacks in New York and the years of health issues that have followed to remove his own mask, via painting, and leave as close to a white canvas of a world environment as possible for the future.