PORT CLYDE, Maine — Kenneth Noland was a regular guy just like anyone else, said his friends and acquaintances, except for one difference: He was a world-famous artist.
Not that he acted like it.
Noland, a pioneer in the abstract expressionist style known as color field painting, died last Tuesday at his Port Clyde home at age 85. Most people who brushed elbows with Noland at places like the Thomaston Cafe or the East Wind Inn in Tenants Harbor never knew how close they came to a veritable master.
“You would never know that he was a great artist,” said Herbert Peters, who owns Thomaston Cafe with his wife. “He was just regular.”
That’s just the way waitress Kim Cameron remembers Noland: always ready with a punch line and always holding hands with his wife, Paige Rense.
“They’d sit down for breakfast and I’d come over and say, ‘What would you like to drink?’” said Cameron. “‘A margarita,’ he’d say with a big smile on his face. Paige would say, ‘Oh, Ken.’ It was so nice to see Ken and Paige come in.”
Tim Watts, owner of the East Wind Inn who cultivated a close friendship with Noland and his wife over the years, described Noland as low-key and humble.
“He certainly wasn’t the type to be impressed with himself,” said Watts. “He never called attention to himself.”
The last time Watts saw his friend was on Christmas. Watts declined to say whether he exchanged gifts with the dying man, adding only that “just knowing Ken was a gift.”
Don McClain, of Tenants Harbor, also an artist, didn’t know Noland as well as some did, but enough that he felt he had a firm sense of the man. Three years ago, McClain asked Noland to donate a print for an auction benefiting the local Odd Fellows.
“He just took me right upstairs, pulled out a print and signed it,” said McClain. “He was very generous.”
Donna Bergen, owner of Mars Hall Gallery in Tenants Harbor, said not many local artists knew Noland well, but his presence was felt nonetheless.
“He holds a very significant place in art history,” said Bergen. “He’s in every art history book. He’s in every major museum. He was like Jackson Pollock. He carved a niche for himself in history.”
Probably few people spent as much time with Noland in recent years as Stan Klein, who was the artist’s assistant for more than four years. Klein described Noland as the others did — generous, funny, humble — but added that another dimension of the man displayed itself in private: driven.
“He really was an artist 12 hours a day, seven days a week, even into his 80s,” said Klein. “There was no Sunday, no Saturday, no Tuesday. Every day was a studio day.”
When some people look at Noland’s work — much of which consists of large shapes in solid colors — they probably get the wrong impression of him, Klein said.
“People get this feeling that because it’s this very austere artwork that he was lacking in personality or something,” said Klein. “When you see the actual paintings, rather than the reproductions, you get a sense of the warmth of the person. He wasn’t just this cold shape. He was that warm texture of a person.”
Klein’s daughter once mentioned to Noland that she was reading Arthur Miller’s “Death of a Salesman” in school. Noland began talking about the days when he lived next door to Miller and his wife at the Chelsea Hotel in New York City.
“I remember him telling my daughter to check out Arthur Miller’s wife’s photography,” said Klein. “‘She’s an exquisite photographer,’ he said.”
Klein said that exchange revealed something about Noland’s personality — and maybe something about the way he wanted to be seen by others.
“I was struck by the fact he began to describe Arthur Miller as this ordinary guy,” said Klein. “It makes you realize that the artist, no matter how famous, is just a person doing what he does, just like you do. That’s what Ken was. His ego wasn’t involved.”
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