My painting was inspired by the painting “Forest Fire” by Raden Saleh. I chose to use this painting because I liked the use of bright colours. When I see bright colours, I am instantly reminded of the constant bright festivals in India, especially sparklers. I tried to show this through my painting, as an explosion of colours. I used mostly red, orange, and yellow like the ‘Forest Fire’ painting. Though bright colours usually point to happiness, ‘Forest Fire’ shows a genuine issue of large-scale forest fires that can eliminate species and put all wildlife in great danger. I needed to incorporate this idea into my painting as well. Therefore, I used grey around the edges of my painting to show the pollution, which is an extremely large-scale problem in India.

I can relate to this painting a lot, because the fires and the pollution they cause are devastating. The pollution is choking, and the amount of animal casualties are horrendous. There is also some level of hope in this painting as beyond the chaos of the fire, there is a calm, beautiful lake in the distance. This is to show that we still have time to reach there and leave this in our past.

I used the number 339 on my painting in normal script and Hindi script. I chose this number because 339 was the air quality number after Diwali in India, 2024. To give some context, any number over 300 as an air quality number means that the air quality is hazardous. This underlines what my painting is all about.

To summarise, I chose this painting because I liked the element of hopefulness in darkness. I also liked the use of bright colours to show a problem. I have used this idea and turned it in my own way, relating it to problems that are close to me.