Once upon a time and long before I actually started to paint, I mused about opening a business.   Not because I had any entrepreneurial desire or talent.  It was just because I thought I had a couple of  catchy names.  For some reason that escapes me now, CHEZ Z’ANNE!!!!! seemed like a winner but then I realized that I might have to either learn to cook or to sell explosives so I have reluctantly abandoned that one.   Then there was the portraiture studio which would call itself “Eyes Right.”  Now we’ve all seen portraits (I’ve painted a few) in which the eyes were creepy in some indefinable way.  But I now paint as many landscapes as portraits and I have come to accept the fact that the woods don’t actually have eyes, so scratch that one too.

The idea did however at least function as a segue to the topic of this post:  eyes.  Jon and I recently watched a television show which showed a series of animal rescues.  In every case, body language, especially that of trust, revealed itself through the eyes in particular.  The infant baboon, lovingly bottle fed by a calm and nurturing woman, maintained adoring eye contact with her  until his wee eyes closed in sleep.  In general, relaxed eye contact, whether by ocelot, grizzly or raven, was the hallmark of a loving relationship.  It was trumped only by the ultimate surrender — submitting with closed eyes to a full body rub.

I have  learned the hard way that monitoring eye expressions is always smart.  My mom was the first to point out to me that cats have expressive eyes.  She pointed out that the our mercurial Tigs squared her eyes when she was in a rotten mood;  only once did I ignore that warning and still have the scars to prove it.   When they are enraged, birds engage in what is called pin-pointing:  the pupils rapidly and repeatedly open and close.  Because Gussie, our orange-winged Amazon parrot, was riding around on my shoulder, I didn’t see his eyes in time to save myself a vicious bite but once I pried him off, I could see that his eyes looked like spinning tops.  That bite is still a mystery but I carried him on my hand after that.  And you will recall that the chomp Mouse (the house grouse) delivered when he was furious at Jon (see “One Foul Fowl, August 29) was preceded by a stink eye.  Don’t ask me to describe it:  I only know when I see one.

We all do.  And that is why I love and fear painting portraits.  Forget big:  go “eyes right” or go home.  I am just beginning a small portrait now of a young boy with beautiful and unusual eyes;  my version of these eyes will either be bang on or the whole portrait will be wrong.  I will let you know.  In the meantime I will show you the eyes of someone special.

Ann Patchett’s novel Bel Canto is rich with music, passion and suspense. Critics loved it too, so I was astonished recently to read Patchett’s description of the creative process. With a few substitutions, this passage could be talking about any artist who tries to convey a transcendent experience:

When I can’t think of another stall, when putting it off has actually become more painful than doing it, I reach up and pluck the butterfly from the air. I take it from the region of my head and I press it down against my desk (easel), and there, with my own hand, I kill it. It’s not that I want to kill it, but it’s the only way I can get something that is so three-dimensional onto the flat page (canvas). Just to make sure the job is done I stick it into place with a pin. Imagine running over a butterfly with an SUV. Everything that was beautiful about this living thing — all the color, the light and movement — is gone. What I’m left with is the dry husk of my friend, the broken body chipped, dismantled, and poorly reassembled. Dead. That’s my book (painting).

Coincidentally, I had chosen the same metaphor last week when explaining to a friend that some images so inhabit my brain that I am compelled to snatch them out of the air in order to share them. I have come to understand that the glorious primary experience of that butterfly - the striking face, that moment in the woods, that glowing still life of apples on the counter — is simply ineffable. Its beauty is artless. The best an artist can do is to convey some small but true aspect of that loveliness. In this painting of poppies, the butterfly being grabbed out of the air was the deep vibrancy of the flowers set against the swirling grey-greens of the foliage.

Once a painting is finished, it is no longer mine; its ownership has transferred to anyone who completes the transaction by simply loving it too.