In the last decade Iris Scott has completed nearly 500 canvases, mostly in oils, using her fingers rather than brushes. “When I see an artwork that makes me gasp — a painting by Artemisia Gentileschi, Klimt, or Picasso, for example — my head exits time, space melts, and the moment stretches into a new dimension of hyper-reality,” she writes. “That is a very important sensation: it is the awe of understanding that a human did this, and it empowers you to believe you can do something profound, too.”