You probably thought finger painting was just for kids, but Iris Scott is determined to prove you wrong. Wearing a pair of latex glove, the American artist dips her fingers in color paint and wiggles them on the canvas to create beautiful work of art.
“I see the world through ‘finger painted’ colored glasses,” Seattle-based Iris Scott says. “I paint what I see. Finger paintings are hiding everywhere, sometimes I catch them when I’m walking down the sidewalk, or lounging in a living room. I search for color relationships, and intriguing forms.” The young artist discovered this ingenious painting technique while on a relaxing artistic retreat in Taiwan. She was exercising her painting techniques in an air-conditioned room, when she realized she needed to go clean her brushes before switching to bright colors. But that required leaving the room and facing the high temperatures outside, so Iris just put away her painting tools and started using her fingers. “I knew within 10 strokes that finger painting with oils was what I would spend the rest of my life doing,” the 28-year-old remembers about that very first finger-painting experience.
These days Iris Scott is a true finger-painting master, able to swirl her fingers on the canvas to create detailed portraits or wonderful landscapes that often filled with textured movement. Although the painting process itself seems very loose, the artist says it requires a lot of preparation: Sketching and photography are very key. Sometimes its a photograph that provides the inspiration, and sometimes I just start sketching and develop the composition. In the evenings before painting days I stretch the canvas by hand, cover it with primer, and set it up in the studio for the following morning.” Once the sketching is done, she paints for about 12 hours straight, on average. It may seem like a lot, but Iris says time passes differently when she’s making art. “In the studio I can lose 12 hours fairly easily because time doesn’t pass in the same way when I’m painting. I’m in a visual zone of consciousness that’s somewhat impervious to the sense of time passing. Hours go by like minutes. I listen to great music and drink lots of coffee,” she told ArtProMotivate.
