Forest Fire

In this painting I wanted to try and translate a forest fire bursting with flames and energy so as to look almost like the autumn season but with a vengeance!
It is only an A3 panel. A lot smaller than most of my work but it was fun trying to challenge myself with such a small canvas and with my standard pallette knives. I painted this scene while remembering the great Bush fires in Africa that I knew so well with the first thing to get your senses is the billowing angry smoke and thr the smells of vegetation both dry and green being incinerated, not to mention the insects snakes and birds and all sorts of other wildlife that gets engulfed and destroyed in the path of the flames, then comes the thunderous noise of the flames eating everything around itself creating that haze and immense heat that you can never forget once you have witnessed it. Then the acryd taste in the back of your mouth almost like sulphur and of course the feeling of a heated snowstorm as the ashes float ever so gently to the ground and all over your clothing and body. Even later in the day and the day after the smell of a true bushfire lingers on not only in the embers and ashes but in the clothing and articles of all those that have been out to witness such a magnificent and yet destructive event that inevitably fertiluzes the soil and cracks open dried seed pods and the like in order that life may once again begin to cycle. Hope you enjoy the picture!