Kronos
I had been reading about Mithraism and was interested in the representations of the god Kronos that the Mithraists made. In Classical Mythology Kronos, or Saturn, was the father of the gods, and came to represent time. As an embodiment of time the Mithraist depiction of him symbolically related to the course of the sun. His lion's head was a symbol of the sun, and the snake that wrapped around his body represented the sun's course. This representation resulted in a symbol that I used often in my paintings of this period, being the snake whose head is surrounded by a sunburst. That symbol is on the side of this clock. But here there is further use of the Mithraic representation since the clock itself has got a lion's head.
I was just beginning to study Neo-Platonism, which I'd arrived at through a study of gnosticism. I was interested in the concepts of God, and eventually us, living in a place outside of the restraints of time and space. At the time that I did this the children trapped inside of the clock represented to me our current situation, defined by time and space. The dove that has flown into the window releases the children at his own disadvantage, and can be the symbol of Christ or any other gnostic sort of a savior that you prefer. The one child reaches out into the light.