These Artists Bring Finger Painting Back! But Not How You Think

Art has always been about pushing boundaries, challenging traditions, and finding new ways to express the depths of human emotion. While brushes, palettes, and tools dominate the world of painting, some artists choose to break away from convention using their own hands as the medium of creation. Finger painting, often associated with childhood play, transforms into a profound and intimate art form in the hands of visionary artists. Every stroke, smudge, and blend becomes an extension of the artist’s touch, carrying raw emotion and energy directly onto the canvas. 

At the Arts to Hearts Project, we love celebrating artists who bring fresh perspectives and unique methods to the world of art. Finger painters are explorers of touch, texture, and movement. A single gesture can suggest a landscape, a smear of color can evoke memory, and a bold swipe can awaken emotion. Finger painting is as much about the process as the final work the dialogue between hand and canvas, intuition and intention. It invites us to pause, look closely, and experience the immediacy of creation in every mark.

This week, we shine a light on artists who choose fingers over brushes, crafting works that are as tactile as they are visual. Through this intimate and hands-on approach, they transform simple gestures into powerful expressions of emotion and imagination. Every mark carries life, energy, and presence, turning the act of painting into something deeply personal and profoundly alive.

Hafsa Idrees @hafsaidreesart

Hafsa Idrees brings a delicate yet vibrant touch to the world of finger painting. Originally from Pakistan and now based in Germany, she transforms paint into emotion through the direct contact of her fingertips. Her process emphasizes intimacy and immediacy, letting intuition guide each stroke and each blend, resulting in works that feel alive with movement and feeling. Hafsa’s creations often explore landscapes, figures, and animals, rendered in a modern impressionist style with hints of semi-abstract expressionism. Colors layer and merge in unexpected ways, textures rise and fall across the surface, and every mark carries her emotional presence. Inspired by the masters yet fully original, her paintings invite viewers to step closer, to see how even small gestures of the hand can convey depth, mood, and story.

For Hafsa, finger painting is more than technique; it is a way of connecting with the world around her. Each canvas is a dialogue between her hands and the medium, inspired by memories, dreams, or fleeting impressions. Blue often appears in her palette, reflecting both calm and intensity, while her layering technique creates a sense of movement that pulls viewers into the composition. Through her work, Hafsa Idrees demonstrates the power of tactile creation, showing that art can be both intimate and expansive, subtle and expressive. In her hands, finger painting becomes a language of its own, where touch, color, and emotion converge into moments that linger long after the eye moves on.

Lorraine McMillan @fingerpaintingartist1

In the hills and skies of Scotland, Lorraine McMillan’s canvases whisper stories of color, texture, and touch. A native of the West, she chose not the brush, but her fingertips as her instrument, a bold and distinctive voice in the world of finger painting. With each press, smear, and subtle curve, Lorraine transforms paint into a living surface, inviting viewers into a world where gesture becomes narrative. Her body of work spans natural motifs, dreamscapes, and bold abstractions.  Lorraine’s journey into finger painting was not sudden, it was a long evolution. After building a career in visual design and 3D work, she gradually returned to painting, exploring different media until she embraced the rawness and intimacy of fingertip application. 

In 2015, she committed fully to this path. This technique gives her work a signature energy. There is no buffer, no tool between her hand and the canvas. The ridges, the flow, the transitions of colour all carry a sense of the artist in motion present, active, responsive. Through this, Lorraine achieves richness and depth, turning simple scenes into luminous reflections of mood and place. Her work reaches collectors globally via online galleries and print platforms. Her prints are offered alongside originals, with her “Finger Paintings” collection particularly prominent across her online storefronts. Through Lorraine McMillan’s touch, finger painting evolves beyond technique. It becomes movement, resonance, and presence. Each stroke reminds us that art is not defined by the distance between hand and canvas, but by the connection, imprint, and vitality that emerges in between.

Bleaune @bleaunestudio

Bleaune’s artwork seems to pulse with life, each piece a direct extension of emotion and memory. Though formally trained in France and Italy, their truest lessons come from feeling, music, and what lies beneath the skin. Now based in Portugal as an oil pastel artist, Bleaune brings immediacy and intimacy to every creation by working directly with their fingertips. Her portraits and expressive forms feel alive, born from pulse and memory. Bleaune works with pastels not just with sticks or brushes, but through direct touch smearing, blending, and shaping soft edges into fluid, bleeding lines that give each piece a breathing, tactile presence.

She says!
“Oil pastels let me be close to what I’m feeling. I work with my hands, so everything is direct: the texture, the pressure, the mistakes. I don’t try to make things perfect. I just try to make them real”

This philosophy shines through every work. Each line and smudge is unfiltered emotion made visible. Portraits reveal not just faces, but traces of breath, shifts in light, and the marks of raw feeling. Bleaune’s art doesn’t ask, “What do you see?”   it whispers, “What do you feel?” For Bleaune, the process is as essential as the result. Fingerpainting each piece is a deliberate choice: break the barrier, let expression flow. The uneven edges, the impulsive swipes of color these are fingerprints of life itself, not imperfections to hide. Through the meeting of hand and medium, Bleaune shows us that vulnerability becomes beauty, mistakes become texture, and true art is measured by how much of ourselves we leave behind.

Often considered playful or childlike, finger painting takes on profound meaning in the hands of these artists. Every touch, blend, and movement translates emotion directly onto the canvas, making each piece a living expression of thought and feeling. This intimate approach celebrates imperfection, spontaneity, and personal expression.

At Arts to Hearts Project, we honor artists who explore these tactile possibilities, turning simple gestures into evocative works of art. If you’re inspired by this intimate form of expression, follow these artists and witness the beauty of finger painting firsthand.