Making Your Mark

Escalator, Oil on canvas, 42.5 x 62 inches

Imagine you are the only person left alive in the world. You can just be yourself and do what you want. What would you do? Except for wondering what the heck happened to everyone else and hoping they didn't suffer, you might do better than expected. Living one's life as if one is alone in the world can sometimes, and I stress sometimes, elevate one's performance to a level higher than it can ever be when we are distracted by silliness and diminished by comparisons to others.

This realization hit me while wandering through the largest museum retrospective of the work of painter Richard Estes, now on view at the Portland Museum of Art.  The exhibition, organized by the Smithsonian Museum of American Art, will run through September 7 and is worth a trip to Maine. (Really, book it now.)

Estes, still painting at 82, is a master of photo-realism who achieved success among his peers yet little notoriety among the public, unlike former street artist Keith Haring whose work, by the time of his death from AIDS at 32, had spawned a cult. Haring's simplistic images, found on coffee mugs, posters, t-shirts, calendars and refrigerator magnets, embody the exact opposite of every Estes painting, the exquisite details of which all but defy description.

Keith Haring's people, dancing?

Working from his own photographs, Estes spent his life depicting urban landscapes, most notably the streets, subways, bridges, waterways, shop windows and people of New York City. Many include reflections of city streets in shop windows and mirrors reflecting those reflections; they sometimes make for a dizzying puzzle. After vacationing on Mount Desert Island each summer, he began painting equally realistic landscapes of Maine's woods, waters and rocky cliffs.

It's impossible to fathom how much time Estes must have spent on even one painting, but when you see the body of work before you--the 50 in this show are only a fraction of his output--it's clear he wasn't much of a party animal. The bottom line: Find what you do and do it, and let everyone else party; when the party's over all you've got is a hangover when you might have created a legacy.

Central Savings, Acrylic and oil on canvas