A portal is a familiar idea. We think of a port of call, a place where we may harbour for a day, a place of passage.
As a nomadic species, it is characteristically human to extend this idea into the subjective realm. Traveling is not without its challenges and unknown obstacles. As travellers these unknowns and challenges present us with unique growth opportunities where we call upon inner and outer resources, sometimes to survive. In such situations there is a change in character and personhood with insights and knowledge gained.
Early church founders recognised a need to communicate this type of subjective transcendence to its members and often did so through pictorial art where a portal became a unique type of gateway, one where attention outwardly is inverted inward.
One gazes out on the over arching scene or landscape and internalises what it might mean. Gates, doorways, and
arches of triumph become unique vehicles to evoke these journeys in the viewer. What is beyond the bend, what is on the other side of that gate, arch or door? What awaits there to greet us or bar the way?
Hopefully, this is the aim of all good art in its basic simplicity and beauty, to solicit discovery inside the viewer. For when we look outward into a portal we are not seeking a discovery of the outside, of something other than ourselves, or something perhaps outside the doors of perception, but rather we are seeking a journey into ourselves, the mysteries and discoveries that we will find there. All this awaits us if we are but willing to look inward, for we never truly look outward in order to there rest, that only comes when we look inside.
"Your visions will become clear only when you can look into your own heart. Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes."
C.G. Jung