Aitken's work portrays an ambiguous, often threatening world where the vulnerability of the human body and psyche are set against the indifferent power of nature or the brutal, panoramic sweep of history. Questions that refer to cycles of life and death, growth and decay or humanity’s interaction with the environment, are explored by the juxtaposition of motifs which can be either explicit or subliminal.
Often, hybridised heads and figures that are part person, part natural forms, populate devastated or decaying landscapes. These mutated images are constructed and informed by a range of visual sources which relate allegories about grand themes such as mortality and love, as well as those which are concerned with the seemingly more mundane experiences of daily life. Using images of people found in the media, his most recent work seeks to explore particular questions that relate to desire, mortality and the threat of violence that pervades much of life.
The synthesis of these sometimes uncomfortable or opposing impulses conflate the boundaries between imagination and reality. In this manner, each work presents imagery and ideas where narrative and meaning are explored in coded and enigmatic ways.