Head 35 - acrylic, varnish, pastel and oil on canvas, 100cm x 75cm, 2010.
Head 44 - acrylic, varnish, charcoal and pastel on paper 59cm x 42cm, 2010.

Studio - work in progress 2010, (detail).

“Looking at Edwin’s work is like reading a poem when you only ever watch television. It has depth as well as immediate allure. It has clarity - but it is complicated. It yields a meaning straight away - but that meaning is very much a provisional one. It invites you to look again and begin to analyse it in different ways. It invites you to think about big things but does so with a lightness of touch that is stealthy and surprising.
The work strips down objects to an emblematic state, without losing their essential character as objects from the real world. Rather than barricading the viewer out, the
dense agglomeration of objects and meanings invite you in.
The work is a result of an ongoing and intense engagement with visual culture and the real world that is both wide and deep...”

Andy Parsons, Publisher -Floating World

The artist books 'Life and Death' and 'Hybrid' by Edwin Aitken are both published by Floating World. www.floatingworldbooks.com

All of Edwin Aitken's images are seductive, unashamedly skilful and synthesise issues that relate to both craft and concept. They embrace popular culture whilst also seeking to engage with art and ideas from the past. In this way, his paintings access themes from history whilst still having a relevance to the urbanised, post industrial and information rich world in which we live.
Previously, his subject matter has been primarily concerned with a navigation of an interior, metaphysical territory. However, Aitken's latest work has begun to look outwards more, encompassing wider issues and world events. Consequently, these images have begun to reflect an increasingly emotive space where tensions and anxieties found in the outside world have begun to be explored.

In these works the natural world and evolutionary theory have been influential, and Aitken has become increasingly interested in representing the physical appearance and structure of the human body. Silhouetted figures have acted as a motif to convey metaphorical topics of both a religious and secular nature, and a series of heads have combined different stylistic approaches to portraiture that reference the precision and realism of Victorian anatomical engravings, with the graphic shorthand of cartoons.

For further information visit www.edwinaitken.com