100 paintings in three days

OLDTOWN — When Doris Oscarson enters an art contest, she takes the rules seriously, but that doesn’t mean she’s not having fun.

The Oldtown artist and Milan Art Institute student recently completed 100 paintings in three days.

Each picture was created in 10 minutes or less and it was for a contest through MAI, an online art school.

“Milan Art Institute wanted us to get out all of our supplies and use them however we wanted to create the 100,” Oscarson said.

“We could paint from a source, or we could just do abstracts, so I did half-and-half.”

The winner gets $500 cash and a $500 gift certificate to the MAI store. On the third day Oscarson estimated that she probably painted for eight hours straight.

Oscarson said the purpose of the exercise is to be free of self-doubt, and artist’s block, to experiment with new supplies that the artist might not have used and see what they could create with them.

“It was an awesome experience, and I found it to be pure joy, although I did get extremely tired on the last day,” Oscarson said. “I didn’t realize you had to complete them all in three days at first, so the first day I painted 14, the second day I painted 10 and then the last day I had to paint 76 paintings in one day.”

The winners for the contest will be announced in February.

SOPHIA MATTICE-ALDOUS IS A MURROW NEWS FELLOW WORKING DIRECTLY WITH NEWSROOMS AT THE NEWPORT MINER AND RANGE MEDIA THROUGH A PROGRAM ADMINISTERED BY WASHINGTON STATE UNIVERSITY. HER REPORTING IS AVAILABLE FOR USE VIA CREATIVE COMMONS WITH CREDIT.