In 2015, Sketch Artist Ken Foster started a project to draw or paint 250 portraits of friends, colleagues and acquaintances he’s met over the years and title it The Portrait Project. Here are Midcoast people you might recognize. For privacy’s sake, Foster only refers to them by their first name. See our original story here.

Steven

This is Steven. He's from L.A. and developed a pretty impressive resumé in the finance and entertainment industries while he was there. He retired to Maine about 10 years ago and that's about the time we met. I was one of several architects and designers he interviewed for a home renovation project. I didn't get the job, but I got a friend.

“Unlike many people, I had zero connection to Maine when I moved here,” said Steven. “I grew up in L.A., and about 10 years ago my life changed in very dramatic ways. I retired, I sold my last company, I came out and got divorced. Both my ex-wife and I were very much involved in the entertainment industry. I worked with Warner Brothers for almost a decade. She was an agent. We lived in Beverly Hills for 23 years. We raised our kids there; I was on the school board, I was President of my synagogue. When my life changed, I desperately wanted to change everything that went with it.”

When Steven’s youngest son graduated from high school, he knew the time was right. “I had a checklist of things I wanted to do,” he said. “I was looking for a town of 25,000 people or fewer, but with a cultural footprint that seemed larger than that. I wanted four real seasons with a winter, because we never got winter in L.A. I wanted a place that had mountains and an ocean or lake, that had a political bent that was progressive or independent. I wanted a place that had some gay people. I wanted a place that had some Jews. But, most importantly, I wanted a place that had the largest amount of independent bookstores per capita.”

Steven admits he “nerded out” by cross-referencing a list of the American Bookseller Association’s Independent Bookstore directory and Census data with metropolitan areas of 25,000 or fewer with these characteristics that were in the north central to the northeast. “Basically, I was looking at Minnesota through New England,” he said. “I found out that there were three finalists: the Berkshires, the upper peninsula of Michigan and Maine.”

Steven had been in the Berkshires, so he made the trip to both the upper peninsula of Michigan and to Maine. While in Maine, he went on a walking trip from Bath to Bar Harbor and conversed with the trip leader, a man from Rockport named John Doncaster. “John and I became friends and he said, ‘why don’t you come stay with me and my wife in Rockport to get to know the area a little better’ so I did.”

At first, Steven leased a house on Sherman’s Point. “I was there for all of it, not just the great summer months, but for black flies, mud season and lots of grey and for the sun setting at 2:45 p.m. in the afternoon,” he said. “What I discovered was I still loved it, I just didn’t like living on the ocean. Being from Los Angeles, under no circumstances was I going to stick a toe in the water,” he jokes.

Today, he lives on a Midcoast lake, with his partner, where he is happiest. Asked what he thought of Ken Foster’s depiction of him in the portrait, Steven said, “It was love at first sight. I’m a semi-public figure so I’ve had a lot photos taken, but I never had something done before that was this warm and textured, so I’ve made it my Facebook photo.”

Look for more stories to come in our Hot Sketch series.

Related stories:

• Hot Sketch: Shannon, Queen of Everyday Adventures

Kay Stephens can be reached at news@penbaypilot.com