"We won at Serenity"

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~90 minute painting. Originally I wanted to paint horsemen coming out of the mist in a dark forest....
Started laying that down, but the heads felt like they wanted to be distant buildings about to be obliterated in a alien nuclear containment incident.

Please pardon my ignorance, but what is the title about? Is this the title of the piece or is it stating that you won a contest with it? Either way, I'm liking the painting although I'm wondering about the red bits over on the right.

The post title is the image's title. It's one of those pretentious attempts at evoking an emotional response in an otherwise unimpressed audience. It's also a reference to the Battle of Serenity Valley in the Firefly series. Though the content is different, the scenario the image is supposed to portray is the same. Namely an utterly Pyrrhic victory where the friendly belligerents resort to sacrificing themselves to defeat the enemy. Thermonuclear weapon usage is implied.
The red bits on the  "burning log" are actually xenomechanical elements on an alien structure. I was worrying about interpretation, as I always do, but a friend advised to lay off that a bit since many people will fail to "correctly" interpret any given artwork anyway. So let my work be the seed to your own imagination and storytelling and let yourself go wild with the interpretation.

You remember this? Everyone thought that was a flame. It represented a person or similar entity in turmoil, distress, and hardship. Not only is it hard to portray that, it's impossible to portray that for everyone.
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All that said, I want to be careful to avoid being lazy about what I'm portraying. Somewhere between the two poles is that happy medium.

Ah, well said. Sounds good to me, and verifies my tendency to overthink things!