Portrait of Lucy

The first aspect of Lucy that strikes me is the frequency with which she smiles. Every photo she has delivered to me has a near-standard grin, transforming what might ordinarily be a plain face into a Christmas tree with lights on, beaming across the room, flooring its inhabitants.

Those smiles are not for the camera, for the portrait, they depict a woman who naturally glows with joy and laughter throughout the day - able to entertain herself with thoughts, words, games even - drawing the elegant magic of moments, writing it into her own work, capturing a special force in a bottle as few are capable of.

Her eyes are a swirling, lovemaking combination of brown and hazel, flickering from excited to clouded, from vibrant to inspired, carrying the weight of her powers and her beauty neatly tucked inside, not hidden, swelling and shrinking, blooming and withdrawing.

She opened herself to the portrait, asked a few questions, I held her cyber hand and walked her through the tunnel of explanation. She listened, she understood, and she enthusiastically decided to participate. She shared older photos and took one immediately upon my requesting it from her. It was a simple interaction and looking at her face in photos, with a smile lit on her mouth that spread across her face like a plague in all its unstoppable glory, regardless of the change in hair colour, it felt like proof of how successful communication between two people could actually be.

One of the photos Lucy sent me was taken in Paris. Well, it included the bonus prize of being five photos in one. In each, a delightful smile the viewer could almost taste. In one part she wore a beret in typical French style as she sparkled in front of the Arc de Triomphe. Then she joked in front of the Louvre museum, smiled wearing sunglasses while standing with the Cathédrale Notre-Dame behind her. The final two had the lit-up-at-night Tour Eiffel and then the legendary edifice masterpiece Notre-Dame cathedral again, both photos with genuine smiles planted upon her lips, leaking again across the surface of her face. Three of the snaps show her wearing the same top, from a sightseeing tour of Paris. The other two are probably from the same trip, possibly even the same day. It looks like a magical time was had.

In most images her hair looks to be a natural mousy brown. In one outlier, she has bright bleached blonde hair, a look that denies her natural presence. Trying out new hats is natural for an artist such as this female poet, this she-force of kindness and imagination.

Videos of her reciting her own poetry online showed her to have beautiful diction, language meaning something, the message of her words also transmitted on her delivery, as well as the expressions on her face and her dancing mannerisms. As the words tumbled thoughtfully from her lips, every part of her was steered towards the task, designed to maximise the potential of her language and find the mark they were intended to hit, one after another landing at its centre.

As I listen to her, allowing those caressed words, as they were mothered, nurtured and unfurled, it is clear love is all around us. It lives in what we do and how. Lucy possesses a beauty that stuns and stops, seizes and drops.

Her pale white English skin crumples like delicious paper as another smile forms. Her scrunched-up nose of several photos is another typically bright feature of her radiant face and her hair flows well past her shoulders, sometimes let loose and at others in a ponytail or even pigtails. In Paris she wore lipstick but in other photos she has naturally light pink naked lips. Her top front teeth appear to jut inwards slightly, and her cartoon smile is undeniably contagious.

As the eyes light up and the smile returns to the bones of her face, I notice how the cheeks protrude, making the lines from her nose to her mouth fierce, how a horizontal line halfway down, or perhaps up, between her bottom lip and the upside down peak of her chin becomes more stated, and having a couple of photos of her in armchairs as well as ones of her out and about, it’s hard to avoid the sensation that she is at her most radiant and happy when at what looks like home, in the comfort of her own environment and with her own possessions, surrounded by the words on pages in books on shelves that she must surely have. Or… it occurs to me, she is on the verge of releasing some of her own waltzing words as she sits, smiling, her thoughts a group of beasts about to be uncaged.

While many people become dull after initially appealing, based on looks or status, Lucy  exudes a charm, a neat trick indeed, that depicts her as someone who would become more interesting over time, a gift that keeps giving, a book you re-read, a place you visit over and over.

Late September 2020

(Portrait done from photos)