"Resistance" - my morning Art project!

I didn't feel overly keen at the prospect of going to Art this morning for some reason, but decided to make the effort. Having got there, I was so pleased I had - great friendly atmosphere and I found I felt quite creative. I'd taken a photo of an Australian gum tree with me and wanted to do something a bit abstract/different with it. I decided to basically concentrate on the trunk with a few branches going off from it. My original idea was to do a sort of red clay coloured background, but I felt drawn to my tube of crimson acrylic paint. I painted this as the background with flickers of yellow and realised that I was portraying a bush fire.....I did the tree in very dark maroon, then decided, after a coffee break, that I wanted some zingy highlights on it. I went for blue and lilac, which are sort of water coloured and I wanted to give the idea that the great old tree was putting up resistance to the approaching fire....Painted the whole thing in a couple of hours, mainly using palette knives.

It was pouring with rain by the time I left my class and rained nearly all the way back home, but stopped as we drove into the village. It's now sunny, but with a very strong wind. It was very strong in the early hours and one of our (full) milk bottles was blown away! Somebody had kindly put it back on our front garden by the time we brought it in this morning. Outdoor photography of plants would be out of the question today - they're being blown in all directions!