Artists We Love: Jake Aikman

INTERVIEWED BY Martina Polley

We chatted to painter Jake Aikman about the inspiration behind his enigmatic and evocative seascapes, which have transcended the canvas to adorn a building in Ukraine’s capital city.

Why did you start painting water?

When I was at Michaelis School of Fine Art I did a series of photorealistic paintings where water was quite central to the theme. For the project, I asked my dad to climb into Dalebrook Tidal Pool in St James, Cape Town. He looked so vulnerable and it made me think about human vulnerability in water. I also surf, which naturally created an interest in the ocean, particularly as an element you can’t control. Seeing my father in the water, his human frailty, I wanted to evoke this same feeling in a painting without the human figure.

Your paintings have been described as peaceful and also as haunting. How do you get the emotion across? 

I suppose I evoke response through the colour and the movement of the water. I believe the people who say a work is peaceful are at peace when they come to view it; I’m not at peace when I’m making it. People have very strong responses to the work and sometimes it’s negative. It’s speaking to what’s happening inside of them. That’s why I abandoned the figure. I wanted the viewer to engage with that feeling and for me to get something ambiguous and universal across.

You recently returned from Spain. Tell us a bit more about that trip.

I had a solo show in Granada. I spent just over a week there. It’s not a big city and it doesn’t have a vibrant art scene. Tourists go there to visit castles (which were fantastic, by the way). I made a good connection there and have been invited to an art fair in Turin, Italy, which is happening in November.

Did your time at Bracciano Lake in Italy inspire any of your work?

I was there for a month in 2014 participating in a residency in one of the small towns. (There are three towns around the lake.) Bracciano is about 20 km northwest of Rome. I had a studio and started producing some of the paintings I work on now. There are dramatic changes in the weather there. The lake can change drastically, and it can, in turn, change the mood of the people. The locals often spoke to me about how that body of water affected their emotions.

How has surfing inspired your seascapes?

The influence surfing has on my painting is not from when I’m catching waves; it’s when I’m bobbing at the backline, vulnerable and exposed. I try to go to Cape Point Nature Reserve as much as I can and I’ve surfed there alone a few times. This one time, I had otters swim up to me in the line-up, flip onto their backs and smash shellfish on their chests. There are no houses around, no cars. It feels like an atavistic experience. It takes you back. It’s timeless. I try to get this across with my paintings. A figure or architecture in the painting would change that; it would place it.

Tell us about your recent move to Tulbagh.

I have lived in the Cape Town City Bowl for the past 12 years. I was considering moving overseas, but my love for the mountain and the sea kept driving me back here. Going overseas seemed like a good opportunity, yet I wanted to be here. Tulbagh is a good place to reset and make decisions. I’m missing the ocean a lot. I wouldn’t choose to be in Tulbagh long term, I’d choose to be near the sea, so I’m deciding when to move back and to where, but it’s given me good perspective.

You painted an impressive three-story mural in Ukraine’s historic capital city of Kiev. Do you have one planned for Cape Town or South Africa?

I haven’t, but I’m looking into possibilities of doing one and am searching for a suitable wall (it would be relevant considering the Cape Town water crisis). [Jake was invited to the Ukraine by international public art organisation Art United Us, which plans to paint 200 walls around Ukraine.]

What’s next for Jake Aikman?

I have two exhibitions coming up. I’m more than likely going to spend some time on another lake north of Chicago up in Michigan, where a family friend has a cabin on Lake Michigamme.