Wendy Webster at her gallery, Wendy Webster Good Fine Art. Owning a Kennebunkport art gallery is Mainers’ dream job, according to a recent survey. Ben McCanna/Portland Press Herald

It’s not uncommon for customers to walk into a Kennebunkport art gallery and tell the owner they wished they could trade lives.

“Some days I say, ‘You can have it!'” said Wendy Webster, who shows her own paintings and the work of other Maine artists at her gallery on Goose Rocks Road.

So, it wasn’t completely surprising for her and other gallery owners in the seaside tourist town to hear that a recent survey found that they had Mainers’ dream business — followed by owning a farm-to-table restaurant and brewery in Portland and a wilderness lodge on Moosehead Lake.

Financial media company MarketBeat polled 3,000 Americans to arrive at an ideal venture for people in every state, with Georgians picking a peach orchard and New Mexicans running a hot-air balloon tour company.

But is the life of a Kennebunkport gallerist all it’s cracked up to be in Mainers’ minds?

“They don’t realize how much is involved in it,” said Webster, who keeps her costs down by having her own frame shop, glass shop, map cutter and large-format printers, so she doesn’t have to outsource that work. She paints constantly and gives lessons.

“They think of it as just being artists,” she said.

Brad Maushart of F8 Fine Art never intended to own a gallery in Kennebunkport. A lifelong summer visitor to the town, he was living in Framingham, Massachusetts, and working as a commercial photographer when he started looking to buy a cottage where his family could spend vacations.

His realtor persuaded him to make an offer on a large house with an attached barn in the center of town, and the seller took it.

“I said to myself, ‘Oh, wait a minute. Now what do I do?'” Maushart said about having all that space.

He and his wife decided to move there with their four young kids and open a gallery in the barn.

Brad Maushart, in his Kennebunkport gallery in 2020, lives on the property and can be working on his house or his art while his gallery is open. Gregory Rec/Portland Press Herald

That was 27 years ago, and he’s still working on the house. Being a mile from the ocean, he said, means endless painting, thanks to the salt air. But because the gallery’s right there — and equipped with an alarm letting him know when someone’s walked in — he can be up on a ladder or in his workshop and come down to make a sale.

That’s another aspect of the business he never envisioned for himself, but he’s gotten better at it.

“I’ve got the gift of gab now,” said Maushart, who 15 years ago switched from photography to painting the abstract nudes that he sells in his gallery. “Do I want that? Oh boy, I’d rather make the art.”

MAKING ENDS MEET

For fine-art photographer Chris Becker, managing a gallery of his work on Ocean Avenue and marketing and maintaining his images, while continuing to make more, means “you’ve got to work twice as hard.”

The balancing act is not unlike that of many Mainers who cobble together multiple jobs to make a living, he said.

What would his dream be?

“Kind of doing what I’m doing, except being compensated better or being busier,” he said.

Photographer Chris Becker in his gallery on Ocean Avenue in Kennebunkport. Courtesy of Chris Becker

Maushart, who always worked in construction alongside creating art, makes ends meet with rental income from condos that he owns in Portland. His Spring Street gallery is closed for the season, but he might have opened it for an event this month during Paint the Town Red — Kennebunkport’s February-long celebration of love — if he didn’t have work to do on one of his properties.

He can’t imagine having the kind of cash that many Kennebunkport tourists seem to keep in their pockets, shelling out thousands of dollars for artwork while on vacation. But knowing people who do has its perks. His customers, he said, tend to be very kind and often invite him places after they buy his work. Though he usually declines, he did take one up on a visit to Cape Town, South Africa.

Maushart sees why his barn gallery would be the envy of any artist, and with the location being so busy in summer, he can put up the “closed” sign whenever he needs to and know that more customers will be coming through again when he opens.

“People come in and say, ‘I’d like to have your life,'” he said, “… but it took a lot of years to get there. It doesn’t just happen overnight.”

LIVING THE DREAM

Becker, a Minnesota native who moved to Maine after tiring of New York City, got his first brush with Kennebunkport’s rich and famous just as he was opening his gallery in 2007. While he was painting the walls, then-first lady Laura Bush walked in. Another time, while he was away in New York, he got a text from the person staffing the gallery saying Bill Murray was there.

Because it’s about a mile walk from Dock Square, the gallery — typically open Saturdays and Sundays this time of year — isn’t somewhere tons of tourists are popping in with kids licking ice cream cones but is more of a destination with intentional customers. Sometimes, they’ll leave empty-handed only to call him a couple of months later asking for two large pictures to be mailed to L.A.

“You never know who you’re going to sit down and talk with,” he said.

This summer, that included someone who “came by and said, ‘You’ve got my dream job,'” Becker said. “Every now and then, I have to be reminded.”

Webster, who grew up in Kennebunkport, always knew this was what she wanted to do, but getting there hasn’t been without its hardships.

A stay-at-home mom, Webster opened a gallery in Dock Square in 2010 after her last kid went off to college. Although the location was great for tourist traffic, it was also prone to flooding.

She opened a second location of Wendy Webster Good Fine Art at her home on Goose Rocks Road about a year and a half ago. Meanwhile, her downtown shop flooded five more times. That meant losing product, moving the art, shutting down the shop and making repairs — all burdens on her time and bottom line.

Now with name recognition and a customer base that would follow her, Webster decided it was time to close shop in Dock Square and move everything to the gallery at her home, which she did in December. It’s open by appointment in winter, when Webster also sells her work at Sugarloaf.

“This definitely has turned into my dream,” she said.