I have been wanting to do a painting like this for ages, I have always been charmed by plants using a palm tree as a host for them to live upon. This one is based on a tree at Heathcote Botanical gardens which has the vine and bromeliads growing up the palm. I took some liberties with the background, wanted it to be abstract so the viewer could see what they wanted in it. I was using my new water mixable oils, had read you cannot mix them with water. I don't know where that idea came from, but I hadn't read those directions (?) when I started using them. It looks like it works fine, I used them about like watercolors in the back, got them totally liquid and dripped them onto the panel, tipping it this way and that to get interesting flow patterns.