My Grandparent's home, Nobelsgate 13 becomes the starting point of Itchycoo.

  Although Itchycoo is from my imagination, it's based within my reality, while revisiting my childhood memories from Norway. It starts with a game in my grandparents house, Nobelsgate 13. The layout of the house in the story, will be the true to the actual house. Many of the familiar object's within the house will also be recognised within my paintings. 

 Mimi will get to Itchycoo by playing a game with her sister. Instead of Snakes and Ladders she plays Slides and Zebras, where they slide down the staircases and (zebra) cross the corridors into different rooms. There is no board with counters. Instead, the house stands for the board while the girls themselves are the counters. They start in the high vaulted attic, looking in boxes. Mimi finds and puts on her grandmothers red dress, there is a gold carousel charm in her pocket. Mimi is the first to make it to the secret room (the room where I used to think the troll lived) She walks further and as her eyes adjust to the light she is walking down a corridor. She wanders where she is going and then realises that she must be walking in a tunnel that lies directly below Nobelsgate. She goes towards the light and realises that she has come into a wonderland that lies beneath the sculpture park- 

This is the Land of Itchycoo - 

This is where my first painting of the series starts:

 Somewhere Beyond The Sweet Milk Mountain.