The Gatekeeper
“Time is too slow for those who wait, too swift for those who fear, too long for those who grieve, too short for those who rejoice, but for those who love, time is eternity.”
– Henry Van Dyke
If you could step into a time travel portal, what do you think you’d be carrying with you? Fear? Curiosity? Hope at the chance to fix something broken? Or perhaps, joy rooted out from the glimpse of excitement to see someone lost to you somehow?
These and many other questions have engaged many philosophers and scientists in conversation. And, while the laws of physics allow for time travel, no one has actually done it. Or have they?
Some claim that one can embark in a journey through time by simply looking at a photograph. There is some truth in that… And while as an artist I can imagine what that might look like, I could also attempt to dip into the fabric of time by capturing my own creative process. I find it quite thrilling to look back and see an artwork unfold itself element by element, hence the following snippets I took along the way.
One way or another, this piece assumed its own theme, as it arrived to the final look and feel. Some events in my personal life also helped, but as I was taking screenshots (as I always do), I saw a flicker of an idea: a gatekeeper to a portal - a vortex that distorts the present into past or future. And depending on how you see things, it might also be a passage into a brighter and more colorful world on so many levels.
Accordingly, the magic around the portal serves the purpose to visually represent the paradoxical nature of time travel as a concept. The gatekeeper is of course a magical creature, or maybe she is a representation of each of us and the way we choose to walk through life. Winston Churchill once said a brilliant thing: “History will be kind to me for I intend to write it.”
And so, if one was truly at the reins of the vessel that we call life, is there really such a thing as choice, or is it all predetermined, and time is nothing else but an illusion that keeps repeating itself over and over in a never-ending loop?
