Evolution of an image

I thought you might like to see some of the stages in the evolution of this image. 

The first photo on the right is a painting.  I liked the colors and textures, but the balance felt way off.

So I did a little replication, creating what might be a nice frame for a face, but the middle was pretty boring. 

To alleviate that boredom, I decided to try copying and replicating the image as smaller blocks of color, doing a little twisting and warping as I went.

But then the color range just seemed too narrow, so I slid the yellows left (on the hue/saturation slider) to become more red, and slid the greens to the right to become more blue. 

The resulting image was cool, so I decided to stop there and post it here today.  But this morning I got up and realized I liked the middle SO much more than the edges.  So I stretched the upper half in all directions and ended up with the image you see at the top left, which I decided to call Celestial Offering.  

Sad to say, by now it's become dreadfully stretched and pixilated; there's no way I could ever print or sell it -- I'd need to start all over, and photograph the original painting at some incredibly high resolution -- and there's no guarantee I could duplicate the process that brought me here. 

But I love it anyway, love the sense of hope and acceptance it conveys.  Looking at it, I hear the echoes of that Anne Lamott quote I posted earlier this week, as if it's "plugged into the vast supply of gorgeous, hilarious, heartbreakingly profound and sweet divine supply."  Which is good; I kind of needed that today...