Evolution of a Work - "Autumn Evening, Round Bales Uphill"

I started working on this painting about six years ago, but most of the time it rested between stages, until the composition felt right to me.

"Autumn Evening, Round Bales Uphill" - completed

This painting began with an initial pastel sketch on location.  Back in the studio, I thought it would be fun to make an oil version on linen, with its beautiful texture.  Below is my initial start of that oil.  I like to begin loosely, and let the shapes and colors get a force of their own.  At this stage, I ran into a problem where the triangular shape in the bottom left corner just didn't relate to the rest of the painting, which had more arc-shaped forms.

Initial oil sketch on canvas

It took a while to find the answer, but I ended up removing the triangle, and brought more light into the foreground. You can see that the background now has more depth as I've layered on more color.  However the painting still lacked unity, so I remembered back to what I connected with at the time I first sketched the scene outdoors- the patches of bright light striking the ground, slanting in during late evening.  So I made the colors more neutral to harmonize with each other (see the image below).

At this stage, it had to rest quite a while because I wasn't sure what else to do to fix it.  The foreground seemed not to hold the eye, so I took the drastic step of adding more hay bales to balance the masses, and to move the eye from foreground to background, with places to investigate on the way in a circular motion.  Compare the image below to the final version above- in the image below, my eye tends to zip right to the row of bales and freezes there- in the final version, my eye circulates around and things feel in balance. 

Second stage - triangle removed