Van Fleet: Loosening the Grid

So many interesting people have been in my studio lately, giving critiques of the work in progress for Nagoya. Primarily, the insights resulting from these conversations have been:

1. Hello, you don't need to have a frame anymore. The edges are important in ecosystems and can be much more interesting in this work.
2. What colors are plants and animals? Those colors should predominate. All the disks don't have to have images, but the disks should have meaning. What is black? The end of the line for a species? A dark womb from which something new will emerge? It can be both!
3. Are these real species or imaginary ones? This question led me to do more visual research to create some of the new disks below. Click on the images for more a more detailed view.
   

I modified the most recent sketch on the studio wall to change the color profile and also to begin to break up the grid. In the next iteration it will be even looser, possibly not even suggesting a grid anymore, but rather a web...

I didn't have enough mammals in the disk paintings. Now they're more represented. Next group: African animals with horns: gazelles, ibex...