Här är konstnärens egna tankar kring hur han valt att gestalta Eowyn och häxkungen. Som han själv tydligt berättar har den fria tolkningen inte att göra med brist på research, det är fullt medvetet:
First of all, I thought to myself, I am going to try to make yet another fusion between the fine art painting and illustration. The important question was; how should I do that in this particular case? Well, in any case, by approaching the subject slightly more like a fine art painter, and less like an illustrator, first of all by avoiding to be too obviouse, too descriptive, too illustrative. Instead, I thought, I should have to focus on one crucial aspect of that whole scene, and explore its emotional and symbolical content, rather than stay on the surface of the event. This aspect had to be important and inspiring.
Secondly, I intended to use as few elements as possible in order to depict it. It meant a simple, kind of minimalistic composition, that still had to be interesting and striking. All details that were not serving the main goal of the composition had to go away. No dead bodies of the orks and man laying scattered all over the battlefield, no broken arms, no flags, no beasts, no king Theoden, no Nazgul (just a wing)…All these tempting things had to be removed from the stage just to give the chosen aspect appropriate attention and to make it recognizable and “readable”.
Thirdly, I tried to avoid, as much as it was possible, the literal pictorial translation of the text lines from the book. As long as this helped me make my point clear and to reach my artistic goal, I was ready to change some details from the text, by introducing inaccurate elements. For instance, I gave Eowyn a full-plate armor, which she, of course, does not wear in the book. I had a good reason for that; first of all I wanted to emphasize the contrast between the masculine aspect of the event on one side, and the feminine presence on the other. This is a crucial aspect of this part of the story, as we know, for no man could destroy the dark Lord…but what about a woman, my Lord Nazgul…?
[…]
So, that is how I came to the final composition that is quite plain, liberated from most of the unnecessary details, and whose intention is to evoke a certain feeling , rather than to offer an accurate account of the event from the story. In fact, what I tried to do is to freeze that moment of Eowyn’s collapse and use it as a symbol of the possible collapse of light and good in the world of Tolkien’s book. In my opinion, this is a kind of mystic moment, that we encounter in our lives from time to time. It happens sometimes that we find ourselves in a desperate situation when the hope is reduced to nothing and when all is pointing out towards the end without a happy end. Yet, something unexpected and unexplainable happens that saves us from disaster. It can be a person who gives us the helping hand, or an unexpected commission, or a newly invented medicine, or whatever ( I personally experienced this wonder almost 20 years ago when I fled my native country). I find this a wonderful mystery and I tried to refer to in my Eowyn painting.
