Fingerpainting

These three paintings were a few that I did a while back to loosen up - it was a short lived obsession (like most of them) and seemed to serve as a palette cleanse after nearly thirty years of old master copies.  I used the first one for a Christmas card from last year (2017).  I had to perk up the details on these with brushes but at first it was straight fingerpainting, and as close to automatic painting as I am likely to get.  I used house paint on top of glaze on primed canvas to get something that would move under my fingers instead of tempera on water on butcher paper, but other than that it was just as much fun as I remembered.  Do they still fingerpaint in school? It was the best.  I think that's when I learned that paint was a very good friend. The images are recurring ones for me over a number of years, bunnies and nature spirits especially, this time the nature spirits were pregnant, which sort of brings together all those fertility figures that I always found interesting.  Still, pregnant fairies are a bit odd.  That spiky plant with the birds on the flower stalk happens over and over and over.