The Call

A visually stunning piece of art, even though the subject is pretty exploited by artists and might seem a bit cliche. Nevertheless, there is a lot of personality involved, the style of the artist being clear, once one looks at the rest of the pictures in the gallery.

The work is filled with mystery,which resides in all three planes that can be noticed.

What I see here are three planes, the dark trees, which fall on the third plane, the light and trees in the front, falling on second plane, and the woman in the front, walking what seems like two dogs, in the main plane.

The most mysterious plane is the second, the light and trees in the front, appearing like a gateway to the mysteries residing in the forest. The "God rays" are almost unreal and appear like a curtain, making the discovery of what lies behind a matter of exploration. One can not know what lies behind, just by looking. You have to pass through the curtain in order to fin out what lies there. The third plane, also ambiguous, only shaped by a few reflections on the trees, works in the benefit of the second, augmenting the effect that the second plane creates. It appears as an outline for the second plane and it is necessary for the mystery to be 100% expressed. The contrast does not lay only in the color range and lighting, its most powerful effect rests in the meaning it gives to the whole composition.
Talking about the color spectrum, the yellowish look of the picture sends us quite a few years back in time, when film cameras had an innate yellowish filtering effect. This creates a feeling of something lost in the worst kind of way, which is time. Nobody can fight time, and the things we lose in time will remain lost because time is something we cannot recover nor fight. This creates a kind of nostalgia in the viewer.

Finally, the first plane, the "person" standing before the gateway, due to it's undefined physical features, is unable to identify. Thus, it gives the option of any viewer to imagine either themselves or other people in front of the gateway to the unknown. The dogs may represent other things that are attached to one's life, but, as in life, nothing is bound to oneself, as people have the option of choice, of what one might want to bring with themselves and what not.

To sum up the long critique, which is a rather personal view on the piece of art, I can associate the whole composition with a step in everyone's, including my life. At some point you will be standing in front of a "gate", with the option to go and find out what is next. However, there are gates that we have chosen not to go through, the mystery of what may lie behind the gate remaining a mystery forever, without the possibility to ever find out what would have happened, or what our lives would look like if the choice was different.