Day Four of the 3-in-5 Challenge

(left) "Her Choice"
Original oil on linen, 16"x20"
©1996 Diana Moses Botkin 

Here is another sampling of my work for the 3-in-5 challenge. You can see that by the time I did these, I was getting away from the tight realism I'd been practicing in my earlier paintings.

I still love detail, but for the past decade or so, I've been trying to focus on it not as much, with the idea that "less is more".

Abundance of detail can be quite beautiful, but for many paintings it is simply a distraction from the visual idea. It's interesting to see the progress while looking at the body of my work for these postings.

"Her Choice", above, received top honors at the 1996 National Christian Fine Arts Exhibit in Farmington, New Mexico and was purchased by the sponsor, Farmington United Methodist Church. Like the piece I showed yesterday which also resides in their permanent collection, I'm very happy it is being enjoyed on a daily basis by many people. This painting also was used, with my permission, for a book cover and for materials for Lutherans for Life.

(left) "Ministering Hands"
Original oil on hardboard, 16"x20"
©1999 Diana Moses Botkin

"Ministering Hands" is special commission I painted for St. Peter Hospital, Family Practice Clinic, Olympia, Washington. I'm pleased it is also in a public collection and being enjoyed on a daily basis by visitors. Reproductions of "Ministering Hands", and also "Her Choice", can be found at my LifeImages Gallery.

I'm skipping through much of my work since Y2K. Many of those have been smaller pieces, a lot of them efforts to learn plein air painting. I also started trying to do the daily painting practice about 10 years ago and most of those pieces have been small studies of everyday objects. They've been good for practice, but looking through them I can see there are not many paintings which went to public collections or won awards. There are a few, but most of those smaller paintings have been purchased by individual collectors, which of course makes me happy.

(left) "Dancer in Red Slip"
Original oil on hardboard, 12"x9"
©2011 Diana Moses Botkin

"Dancer in Red Slip" appeared in the 2011 Oil Painters of America National Juried Exhibition and resides in a private collection overseas.