The Time Series

The Time series, also called Metaphor of Memory represents time as seen through various lenses. Here are the titles:

Gathering / Time
Keeper of / Time
Migratory / Time
Lunar / Time
Generations in / Time
Healing / Time
Tidal / Time
Early / Time
Reflections in / Time

no matter what the subtext of the painting is, the theme is an exploration of how and why we perceive time as we do. Some of my thoughts are evident in the paintings, but more importantly, the questions that I asked myself are there, for others to explore, as well.

When I first began this series, it was to better understand memory. Because two people may remember an event very differently or the same person may remember an event differently, depending on his or her state of mind, it is evident to me that memory is metaphorical, rather than exact.

However, years before beginning this series, I'd copy-edited a series of graduate level physics books. One in the series was in quantum physics. Questions regarding the nature of quantum particles began intriguing me then, and still do. This series evolved as it progressed, from Metaphor of Memory to the Time series, where I recorded some of my impressions.

Briefly, quantum particles/waves, which are around us and within us, break the time-space barrier by jumping from time through space at light speed, constanly. At light speed there is no time, as we know it. Time is infinitely slowed.

We commonly define time in terms of our progress; as a sequence of events, rather than as the speed limit at which we move. Why?

May we escape sub-light speed, by changing what we identify with, and the way we perceive? As we become less materially-minded, and we identify more closely with wave, rather than particle, are we transforming ourselves from the material to the energetic level of existence? I believe so. Shrodinger's work in physics validates that perception alters reality.

At this point, I think that all those moments of time which are truly meaningful to us in our lifetime are imprinted with our energy, and that these moments essentially hitch a ride on quantum particles out of the present and into eternity. Those moments are us. They are our personal energy taken into the eternal and made infinite.

Lainey Sainte-Marie