refining the concept

Three panels in the studio are clamoring for attention:  "Houses" and ""Zen"(both mentioned in previous posts), plus "Wingate", one of the pieces I began at the Mineral Point workshop.  All the workshop pieces arrived safely last Thursday, and have joined the many other panels on my studio walls. The near chaos of having so many pieces on display prompted me to rearrange and clean the studio, so that even though there are still too many panels around, the small ones are tucked behind the door, and the larger pieces are those that I see when I walk in.
Although I haven't been working exactly systematically since getting home from Wisconsin, I have been consistently pursuing the vision that I conceived there of rendering the country in which I live by abstracting the geologic processes and formations using cold wax techniques. A day away from the studio yesterday led to me waking up early this morning with that vision on my mind, and multiple ideas of things to try. This is what happened every day during the trip, and I welcomed the renewed focus.
All three of these pieces are currently in that "middle" zone of having developed in interesting ways but still lacking any sense of completion. It is time for re-vision work on all of them, and the pre-dawn clarity of the early morning brought inspiration for each. The first two have had a couple of layers of "aerial" treatment, with patterns and textures inspired by photos and maps. "Wingate" is one step further along, with some initial portrayal of layers of rock as we see them (the image above is the piece as it currently exists). All three are the result of the process I conceived in Mineral Point, and are confirmations of it. In each, initial random chaotic layers gave way to loose compositions based on actual aerial views provided by maps and photos, and are now ready for revision into "portrait" views of the layers of Capitol Reef.