
Bonnie Mee
My inspiration for this art piece was the painting ‘Forest Fire’ by Raden Saleh. I saw this painting on our school trip to the National Gallery. It is an oil painting of wild animals such as tigers and bulls fleeing to the edge of a cliff to escape a forest fire. The colour pallet of this painting consists of reds, yellows, oranges, browns and a slight bit of blue, it was painted in 1849. I chose the idea of painting my dog Doug, because he is aggressive and playful and recently got kicked out of day-care! I composed him aggressively running towards his food because he loves food and always eats his, as well as my other dogs food before she can even get a bite. I chose the colours red, pink, black and blue because they symbolise aggression and playfulness. I chose the number 2 because at home I have 2 dogs.
The artist, Raden Saleh, was born in 1811 and died in 1880 aged 68, 30 years after painting Forest Fire. He started painting in 1829 and continued for the rest of his life, finishing his last work only a month before he died. For my painting I used many different techniques to paint, using sponges, brushes, cotton buds and more. For the background I used a sponge to get a nice textured appearance.