The Future Library is not the first of Paterson's artworks to tackle the human relationship with long-term time. She traces her fascination with the theme back to her early 20s, when she worked as a chambermaid in Iceland, and was struck by the extraordinary landscape around her. "You could almost read time in the strata, you could feel the midnight Sun and the energy of the Earth," she says. "It just was a very beautiful, sublime, awakening landscape to be around."
