"Into the west" by Anna *Snotra* Sarwe

Inspired by the song into the west by Annie Lennox.

I wanted to make a picture of what fantasy is to me: Venturing into new worlds you have not seen before. I decided to paint the things which takes us to these new worlds, so i took the passage to another world from different books and depicted them in my own way.  the gray background represents the dullness of everyday life, and the bright colours represent the contrast of fantasy as compared to reality. The swirling brown things surrounding the Passages or Keys I leave up to you to interpret, but to me it represents everuthing fantasy.

The sky with the stars on is from disneys movie Peter Pan, where neverland is the second star to the right and therefore the "passage" to this world is the night sky.

The book is from "The neverending story" by Michael Ende. In this story a young boy opens a book and is taken to a whole new world and takes part in a great adventure, which ends with opening a book which takes you to a new world...

The book could also represent all kinds of litterature, seeing as reading a book (especially fantasy) is going into a world (or part of the world) you have never seen before.

The upside-down pyramid is from the book Abarat by clive Barker. By using this device Candy is taken to the strange world of Abarat to help save the people of that world from Christopher Kadaver (this is his name in the swdish translation, I do not know his name in english)

The ship/boat is the elven ships sailing from the gray havens in The lord of the rings. A boat-journey usually means going someplace new or different, and since the song that inspired me to do this is from "The return of the king" I thought it would only be appropriate to include something from these books in the picture.

The making of this painting was a very relaxing process, but I learned a lot and finally decided that I am going to by better watercolour paints (this was made using W&N Cotman paints, which are quite unpredictable and weak in pigment). It also made me want to paint more, which is something I have not felt for a few months. So this is a picture I am very fond of, and I hope you like it!