She achieved critical acclaim during her lifetime for her naive paintings and her work has been included in exhibitions of visionary and folk art since the 1980s.
[4] Gayleen Aiken produced paintings and drawings that often combined narrative text and image, cardboard cut-outs, and book works.
These themes were connected via a cast of recurring characters: members of an imaginary extended family which she called the Raimbilli Cousins.
[6] In 1997, Harry B. Abrams, Inc. released Moonlight and Music: The Enchanted World of Gayleen Aiken, produced with the novelist Rachel Klein.
Her artwork has been featured in The New York Times, Raw Vision, The Boston Globe, Smithsonian, and Folk Art Magazine.