SUM of the Parts - but not ALL

You are familiar with the saying " the whole is greater than the sum of its parts".
Not this time....
Last year I did this 30"x 22" painting of the Great Sand Dunes to replace another oversize piece that sold from the Dunes Show up at Denver International Airport. The first one was fresh and little wacky, but colorful and I thought I could improve on it. Instead, I painted a snoozer - that's artspeak for - boring -.
It has been hanging in my studio for a few months and I could hardly stand to look at it -
so, with nothing to loose, I started cutting it up.
I don't do this often, because it so seldom works compositionaly; your signature ends up right in the middle or some other dumb thing.
Sometimes tho', trimming or resizing a piece can change the focus or bring different elements to life.
In this case - there were areas that I liked but the whole piece was weighed down by a huge chunk of drab middle ground.
I cut the vertical piece, to the right, first to a 2 x 1 format. This is one of my favorites formats and I like verticals. The new piece is 20"x 10". This makes the trees more important, still showed the dunes, and accentuated the distance.
In the smaller 10"x 8", the dunes become the focus, playing up the diagonal shapes.