Reflecting on my art journey's direction

A website about Discovering Your Ju Ju is for me a reminder I must think about finding where I am going with my painting journey. The rain is falling hard on my umbrella and navigating around my studio and home is slowing me down.
I was looking for a couple of flutes I traded for a painting in October. I thought I put them in a closet and I went there first but did not see them tucked behind everything else. I frantically started looking in every nook including my studio where behind stacks of frames and finished painting piled in front of bins on wheels full of more painting behind which is a closet with more shelves stacked with paintings. When there is hardly room to walk safely into my studio, it is time to make some changes. Finally my husband found the flutes on the shelf where I thought they should be but I just couldn't see them because of all the knitting projects and table clothes crammed tight in front of the flutes.
The article speaks of pieces only you could do. I will keep what is truly me and recycle what is not. I have already started to donate seven 8" square Masonite blocks to the acrylic painting class at the Grace Center. Secondly, I am exhibiting about 50 to 60 paintings at the Albany Public Library over the next three months. And I have about 15 at a local business on rotating loan for a decade now. With these paintings out in the community, I will have time and space to retire ones that someone else could have painted. Retiring means recycling them.

Acrylic painting class Grace Center day care for adults

Tuesday seven participants painted 8"Masonite blocks. These two were a demonstration of Negative positive areas and painting with rags, sticks, variegated scrapers as well as brushes.
The class remained engaged for well over an hour.

"Fish Story" exhibit at the Albany Public Library December and January

A free class in painting watercolors, a family event, at the Albany Public Library. Time and details to be announced next week. Below is a painting that will be on display.

"Spawning at the South Santiam Fish Hatchery" watercolor on a full sheet, image size 22" x 30" This is a key painting in the exhibit, "Fish Story" all about volunteers including Boy Scouts helping the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife. This painting is donated to Oregon Hatchery and Research Center

December through February Exhibit at the Albany Public Library

"Humbug Creek Revisited after 42 Years", Breitenbush, Oregon, 2002, acrylic on stretched canvas, 55'x 40". The small stones and still waters shaded by vegetation has been flooded away down to bed rock, the big mossy bolder remains. Although my mother's prophetic view of forests and fisheries is partially true, I have paintings telling optimistic stories of volunteers working the Department of Fish and Wildlife to reclaim nature's bounty.

My mother and I did art work on a camping trip. Hers is pencil on watercolor paper, 22" x 18". I did not understand her work then. Now I see she was drawing the future of idle fishermen waiting for the fish to return. The eroding deforested hills with corny fields of planted trees. Mine was of the stream in a corridor of woodlands by the creek. Humbug Creek, Oregon, 1960, oil, 24" x 18"

Alsea River, Acrylic on Museum wrapped canvas, 40" x 55" These paintings ar edonated to Oregon Hatchery Research Center.

Accordion Folded watercolor of Rocky Creek Wayside

This 9 1/2" x 4" painted on location has some information that a photograph did not. My eye saw more color and textures. I tend to exaggerate them and the camera made the whole more smooth.