Staying Up Late Translating Doodle Portals

I asked my 7-year-old daughter what she thought about this picture and she gave me a 15-minute, in-depth explanation that was as good as any I could have come up with myself. I suspect putting off bedtime was the primary reason her story was so extensive, but she had some great insights that helped me see my picture beyond my own interpretation. Part of her description had to do with the person in the picture seeing a portal in the sky that was lifting people out of the sand, and this person is starting to form into another body, but that other body isn't real. I had never thought of the spirals that are inside and outside of the figure as "portals," but she recognized them immediately thanks to all of the spiraling portals spinning around the characters on Cartoon Network these days. I like her concept of portals and I think it nicely describes the stuff being conjured in this picture. It reminds me how much I like the idea of personal translation as it applies to art and how many ideas can come out of a few simple lines.