Artist Roger Milinowski possesses an ebullient personality and distinctive sense of humor, but make no mistake, he is very serious about his work.

Pay Milinowski a visit at his Boothbay Harbor gallery, Head of the Harbor, view the bronze and marble sculptures and paintings and meet the man.

A contemporary realist, his paintings capture Maine scenes, and others along the eastern seaboard, in tightly rendered landscapes and seascapes.

At any given time Milinowski has a couple dozen (“at least”) paintings going. He paints plein air, applying the finishing touches in studio.

“Whenever possible you paint on location (plein air) to understand the scene, to understand what's going on,” Milinowski said. “You see the true colors, the depth, sense the atmosphere.”

When not on location, most recently on Nantucket and Martha's Vineyard, he can be found in his studio above the gallery.

The studio is alive with paintings in progress and field studies waiting to be transformed into a full-fledged work. It is also stocked with swipes, “billions of them.”

Swipes are reference materials mounted on cardboard or heavy grade paper. They produce a library of sorts comprising photographs — the artist's or someone else's, images cut from magazines, field studies and sketches. Some of the swipes are suspended from above, others are filed and categorized — flowers, boats, water — in the open, and others are stored in a large bureau turned file cabinet.

“I have billions of them,” Milinowski said. “There is no writer's block going on here. No ears being lopped off.”

In addition to paintings and swipes, mirrors are suspended in various locations around the studio. Milinowski is able to see the painting he is working on from a variety of perspectives.

When he enters the studio by spiral staircase, he dons his white chef's coat or artist's smock, switches on some classical music, looks and listens.

“A painting chooses me each morning,” Milinowski said. “It entices you and pulls you in you just want to get in there.”

Milinowski uses only Rembrandt and Gamblin brand oil paints and uses the same palette all of the time. He prefers oils because “you can do anything with them.”

He uses the same palette all of the time, preferring the earth palette — raw sienna, yellow, yellow ochre, cool and warm red, burnt sienna, meridian, cobalt and ultra marine blues, white — although he notes white can be made white with other colors. He says this palette produces “true colors as they are seen.” Milinowski says he can discern 400,000 colors from the earth palette.

His painting station/easel is on wheels and has two sides, one for the Maine paintings and the other for paintings of the south, particularly the Charleston, South Carolina area, a location he travels to annually.

Using the same palette for the last 15 years makes it easier for his “frequent tweakin.”

With the exception of about 30 percent of his work, Milinowski is an artist without qualms about taking a painting created years, or months, earlier and adding to it. Or, he will almost finish one and hang it in the gallery, he refers to this as “letting the defense rest.” He will listen for comments from gallery visitors.

While he prefers classical music in the background for its ability to “set the visual and auditory mood,” should you happen to be walking past the gallery and hear Buddy Guy or Stevie Ray Vaughn instead, take it as a sign things are “not going well.”

Milinowski came to Boothbay Harbor in 2000 from New York, a successful sculptor (in bronze and marble), illustrator, designer and art director for design firms. Milinowski has a degree in industrial design, which prepared him for everything, and an extensive fine arts education. And he's still learning.

When artist Don Demers is in town offering a course, Milinowski is right there, and thinks every artist should be. Demers, he says, “is one of the best painters in America today.”

“You can spend an entire lifetime learning about painting. You're learning a different language with many dialects. There's a lot of playing around with lighting, line work, edges ... it's like a chess game,” Milinowski said. “The moves are endless.”

Over the past 15 years Milinowski has completed 700 paintings (as of mid-September). Milinowski also has works in Boothbay Harbor Framers Gallery and COCO VIVO in Boothbay Harbor, The Cuckle-Button Farm Gallery in Perkins Cove, Ogunquit; COCO VIVO's Charleston gallery, and three galleries in Connecticut.

Milinowski says that at this point, he can't stop himself from “framing” new paintings when he is out and about. No filters.

As he would say, "There's just no end to it."

Head of the Harbor Gallery is located at 31 Union Street, Boothbay Harbor,

For more information, visit http://headoftheharborgallery.com or call 207-633-1001.