Growing up in Scarborough, I knew the spectacular cliffs of Prouts Neck long before I ever heard the name Winslow Homer. Later, while I was working as a bellman at the Black Point Inn, I was given the responsibility (and privilege) of leading hotel guests along the neck’s famous cliff walk to the Homer studio. In Edgar Allen Beem’s article, “Winslow Homer’s Odyssey” (page 54), honoring the centennial of the painter’s death, he calls Homer the greatest American artist of the nineteenth century, “with an achievement [comparable to] Manet or Courbet, if not Degas.”

Superlatives are funny things. When one says that flossing is “the best daily preventative against gingivitis,” one is making a claim that is measurable in its effectiveness. But what does it mean to call Winslow Homer Maine’s greatest painter? I studied just enough art history in college (most of which I’ve forgotten; sorry, Professor Scully) that I could probably marshal a few arguments for Homer’s innovative depiction of motion in a two-dimensional medium or his rendering of nature as a force beyond human control or understanding. But what I ultimately mean is that when I look at Weatherbeaten I can almost smell the sea and hear the crash of waves against rocks I myself have walked. To the extent that my own personal measure of an artwork is the strength of the emotion it produces in me or the challenges it places on my preconceived ideas, I will assert that, yes, Winslow Homer is the greatest painter our state has ever produced. He belongs on my personal best list.

But that’s all it is: my own, highly subjective list. Nearly all magazines are in the business of proclaiming “the best” this and “the top” that when what we really mean is “the editors like this stuff.” Every year, Down East publishes an annual “Best of Maine” issue, and I don’t mean to suggest we take these choices lightly; we spend hours researching and debating places we can, in good conscience, recommend to our 338,000 readers. This year we even enlisted you to name some of your own favorite Maine stuff (page 71).

But are the 109 items on our list (and your list) really Maine’s best? You’ll just have to try them all yourself and tell us. What matters isn’t our opinion, but yours. These superlatives are arbitrary, after all — except when it comes to flossing.