An opposable thumbs-up

For a moment, the artiste is stuck in his timid, temperamental phase, and who can blame him?

He's a child prodigy used to painting in private, where he creates swirling color masterpieces known to fetch thousands when offered to the art world.

And now, for the media, he's being asked to produce on cue, like some animal in the zoo.

The long-haired phenom responds with the actions of a defiant doyen: He grabs the canvas, and starts to lick the paint off.

"Okie, can I have it back, please?" Brandi Moores says to the 13-year-old western lowland gorilla -- more formally known as Okpara .

Okie pushes the paper under a mesh metal door that separates him from Moores.

"Good boy," says Moores, 26, a gorilla keeper at the Franklin Park Zoo who also serves as Okie's muse. "Let's try it again."

Moores pours some green, orange, and purple nontoxic children's paint on a white page, and slips it back to Okie.

"Can you paint?" she asks him.

Okie pats his left knuckle on the page.

"Good boy," says Moores.

She pops a red grape in the gorilla's mouth.

"Can you paint?"

This time, Okie smears the colors across the page with his palm in one of his trademark swooshes.

"Good boy," says Moores. She gives him another grape.

He paints some more. Then, in a flash, Okie takes off on all fours, careening his squat 5 -foot, 375-pound frame across the mulchy ground of the zoo's new $2.3 million gorilla exhibit.

Those who enter the zoo's Tropical Forest area between now and the end of August will be able to view the vibrant finger paintings of Okie and his protective pal, Little Joe.

There are 15 pieces included in a show titled "Okie & Little Joe: A Restrospective," and it is appropriate that 12 were done at the hands of Okie.

Little Joe is the 14-year-old serious, dominant male of the zoo's seven-member gorilla group, a well-known escape artist who dabbles in painting but hates to get his hands dirty.

Despite his outburst of obstinance, Okie is the more free-spirited one, considered the group's care-free artist-in-residence.

Minutes before his public display of painting, Okie was the portrait of modern cool: His hair seemed to be sticking up in a modified mohawk as he crossed one leg over the other and sucked his thumb.

Zoo officials say the woolly wunderkind has the perfect temperament for artistic endeavors.

"By nature, he's loose," says John Linehan , president and CEO of Zoo New England, which operates the Franklin Park Zoo in Dorchester and the Stone Zoo in Stoneham. "If he had a chance, he'd be wearing a bandanna."

Okie has been finger-painting since 2004, Moores says. Offering the animals the chance to finger-paint or play with buckets or forage for their food is a way to keep Okie and the others from lying around all day like a bunch of gorillas.

"Their environment is not changing; we have to change it for them," Moores says. "We want to keep them mentally stimulated in captivity."

Even if he never paints in the open again, Okie's artwork still would provide a valuable connection between primates and the public, say zoo officials, who believe the bond has been enhanced by the new exhibit that lets the gorillas be seen up close and personal through glass.

"It brings almost a sense of enlightenment," Linehan says of the finger paintings, "the commonality between people and the rest of the animal kingdom."

"It's not just people who are capable of art," he says.

Through a zoo promotion, kids will get a shot at showing off their own artistic skills -- and to win an Okie -- either by working with finger paints provided at the zoo from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. every other Sunday from next Sunday through Aug. 19 or by mailing in their handiwork by Aug. 10 .

Okie the abstractionist has already set a high bar.

During the Zootopia! 2007 benefit last month, one of Okie's premier pieces garnered a donation of $10,000 .

At the benefit the year before, zoo official and money manager Grace Fey purchased an Okie original for $6,500 .

Fey says that on the wall of her office in the Financial District, overlooking the State House, and near other keepsakes, such as her chartered financial analyst certificate, she proudly hangs her framed Okie piece of flowing blues and yellows, reds and purples.

"It looks like a piece of modern art, like a Jasper Johns ," says Fey, an executive vice president at Frontier Capital Management Co. and chairwoman of Zoo New England 's board of directors. "I'll never sell my Okie. It's very special."

Ric Kahn can be reached at rkahn@globe.com.