By Steve Jermanok, Globe Correspondent

IF YOU GO To visit Prouts Neck, take the Maine Turnpike to Exit 6 (Scarborough). Turn left onto Payne Road and drive to your second light, where you turn right onto Route 114. This will take you all the way through the town of Scarborough. When Route 114 veers left, continue straight to Route 207, also known as Black Point Road. This will get you to the cliffs of Prouts Neck and to Winslow Homer Road. Winslow Homer's studio is open to the public May through October, from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Portland's International Airport is only 13 miles north of Prouts Neck. Opened in 1878, the Black Point Inn is the only accommodation on Prouts Neck. Guests at this exclusive resort are permitted to use the 18-hole golf course and 14 tennis courts. You can also rent boats at the local yacht club or simply lounge at one of their two beaches. Rates start at $130 per person, including breakfast and dinner. Call 207-883-4126. Bayley's Camping Resort is 10 minutes southwest of Prouts Neck in West Scarborough. Once you venture here, you'll realize why it was recently voted the campground of the year by the National Association of Campgrounds. Paddleboats, swimming pool, Jacuzzi, horseback riding, fishing, game rooms, special programs for children and adults - the list goes on and on. Rates range from $27.50-$36.50 depending on sites. Call 207-883-6043. You can't visit Maine without trying the tasty crustacean pictured on the state's license plates. A century ago, lobsters were only used to feed prisoners. Now it's the most popular entree on the menu. Bayley's Lobster Pound in Scarborough is my favorite place in the region for lobster and seafood. Call 207-883-4571. See some of Homer's original work at the Portland Museum of Art. Designed by I. M. Pei, the building houses paintings by Picasso, Degas, Hopper, and Renoir. It's at 7 Congress Square; call 207-775-6148. - STEPHEN JERMANOK

PROUTS NECK, Maine - The floorboards of Winslow Homer's second-floor porch creak with every step, like the sound of a boat rubbing up against the side of a dock. Indeed, this studio perched on the tip of Prouts Neck, was Winslow Homer's ship - the well-trodden porch, the bow where the renowned artist could view the entire length of the neck's boulder-strewn coastline, the battering surf of the northern Atlantic, and the merciless Maine climate, complete with dense fog and forceful gales. Here, nature provided the tense drama between sea and shoreline.

All this brilliant pictorial storyteller had to do was wait patiently, sketchbook in hand, for the weather to take a turn for the worse. Perhaps it would be a sudden squall, thrusting the waves against the wall of rock and then upward 20 to 30 feet in the air like a geyser of water shot from a whale's blowhole. Or, better yet, a battle of man versus nature; a fisherman desperately trying to reach shore to escape the rough seas, only to find his small dinghy stuck on the rocky outcroppings as the angry waves bathe him in salt.

Homer waited, ''wearing out the balcony,'' his brothers would say, for that often unfortunate, yet very real conflict. Although two houses now obstruct the view to the east, the scene to the west and straight ahead to the south have changed little since Homer's presence on these shores. The exclusive home of his father and oldest brother, Charles, called the Ark, still stands to the right of the studio. Juniper trees, planted by Winslow, slope down from his backyard to the moors, eventually reaching the ubiquitous Maine gray rock that lines most of the Neck's shoreline, detritus that remains from a glacier retreating more than 10,000 years ago. Geologists call it a drowned coastline. Then there's the great expanse of ocean where, in the distance, a mile or two out to sea, stand Bluff and Stratten islands.

I chose to visit Prouts Neck in autumn, a time that Winslow Homer cherished and produced his greatest work. The halcyon days of summer, when the sun beat down on the calm waters of the Atlantic, had very little appeal to him. On one such day he spoke of the ocean disdainfully as ''that duck pond down there.'' In Prouts Neck, he chose to concentrate on the perils of the sea. He would often work well into November and December, the time of year when waves come crashing out of the ocean to hurl themselves against the cliffs.

It is these wrenching yet very real images of Prouts Neck that set the groundwork for Homer's best works. Homer had seen Prouts Neck once before, in 1875, on a visit to his brother Arthur, who was honeymooning at a resort here. When he returned in 1883, from a stint in Tynemouth, England, he would make this small spit of land his primary residence until his death in 1910.

My first stop in Prouts Neck was Number 5 Winslow Homer Road. A small white sign in iron letters stating, ''Homer, The Studio,'' confirmed this simple structure's legacy. Inside, I walked through a kitchen, once Homer's bathroom, and entered his living room. Prints lined the walls but nothing was original except for two watercolors done by his mother and a portrait of Homer created by a young woman who befriended the artist in his later years. Evidently, she ran out of paint and knocked on Homer's door to ask if she could borrow some tubes from him. Homer obliged and shortly thereafter asked her to draw the portrait of himself for five gold coins. His mother's watercolors depict a vase of flowers and, not coincidentally, a group of fishermen out to sea. Other intriguing relics in the room include Homer's brush and paint under a plate of glass.

None of these items, except, of course, his paint and brushes were here during Homer's stay. Most of the furniture, prints, and other items seen today were planted here by his brother Charles to give the place an aura of how an artist's studio should look. Indeed, by the time Homer died, several of his works were already on display at such major museums as the Museum of Fine Arts and New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art. He was becoming famous and people were starting to arrive in significant numbers to transform his studio into something of a shrine.

Although this facade continues to delight visitors, these adornments can't hide the fact that Homer chose to live in monastic conditions. His studio was almost barren. The only furniture he had was four incredibly uncomfortable hickory chairs, a tip-top table, and, in the adjoining painting room, a rustic settle. His bedroom was furnished with a small bed, pot-bellied stove, washstand, and another wooden chair. Homer's only decorations were fishing and hunting paraphernalia, including a birch-bark canoe he had brought from Canada.

Even the studio, a plain frame building with a square mansard roof, had humble beginnings. It was formerly Charles's stable in the back of the Ark. When the family first learned that Winslow was planning to reside permanently in Prouts Neck, they hired a builder to construct a painting room in the rear of the Ark. Valuing his privacy, Homer refused to work or live in the Ark and asked for the stable instead. Charles agreed and Homer hired an architect to remodel and move the structure to where it stands.

Adjacent to the living room is the painting room, also known as ''The Factory.'' Homer had the room added on to the studio several years after he moved to the Neck. When the weather outside prohibited Homer from painting plein-air, a painting style representing observed effects of outdoor lighty and atmosphere, he would retreat to the room to put the finishing touches on a piece of art. Yet, while the studio felt warm even in these cooler months, the room is dimly lit and must have been a deterrent from Homer's working inside. Very little natural light enters through the windows and Homer only had two kerosene lamps at his disposal. Thus, at every opportunity, he would be outside, painting on his porch or sketching on the cliffs.

An easel Homer used still stands in the room along with a fishing hat he wore known as a sou'wester. The hat can be seen on the heads of many of the fishermen he portrayed, most notably the two men in his epic painting, ''Eight Bells'' (1886). On another wall hangs a boldly lettered sign that reads: ''SNAKES! MICE!'' Homer wrote this to discourage ''the damned old women,'' his reference to the elderly summer visitors, from disturbing him while he painted on the cliffs. Like many talented, creative minds, Homer was incredibly focused when he sat down to paint. Even the slightest interruption would drive him mad. He valued his privacy so dearly that he developed a set of identifying signals for his family to use when he was working inside the studio. For example, his nephew would rap twice on the door quickly. If he heard a knock that was not in code, he rarely answered his door, especially if he was working.

Later in life, Homer would develop a reputation as a hermit, even a misanthrope, mostly because he refused to converse with the summer visitors. He was one of the few artists who found fame in his lifetime yet might have enjoyed a posthumous success in order to preserve his privacy. At the turn of the century, autograph seekers, journalists, art students, even female admirers began to hound Homer. He started to take trips away from Prouts Neck in the summer to avoid the badgering.

From Homer's second-floor porch, I strolled down the stairs and out the door past the junipers to the rocky shoreline Homer knew so well. There in front of me, several feet from the cliffs, stood the rocks Homer painted in ''A Summer Squall'' (1904), the first of many formations I would find that day that the painter captured in his work. Waves washed over the large rock in the center, several yards away from where Homer would often fish for tautog.

I was standing on a well-worn path, part of the mile-long Cliff Walk created by Charles in 1879. It was at that time, when the Homers were developing the Prouts Neck, that a broad marginal way was formed around the perimeter to preserve the most scenic part of the peninsula. This area would be accessible to all land owners. Even to this day, with the onslaught of construction, the Prouts Neck Association has kept the area free of all houses. The public is welcome to take the same walk Winslow Homer took almost every morning at 4:30 a.m. with his dog, Sam, a white wire-haired terrier. Often these strolls would be exploratory, a research expedition for Homer to learn more about the rocky coastline and how waves, wind, and shore interact. Ever so slowly, he came to know every rock, cliff, and bush on this varied shore and how these natural components responded to the tumultuous Maine weather. Throw in the frailty of humanity and Homer had an inexhaustible supply of subjects for his paintings.

With the sounds of waves ringing in my ears, I walked to the western part of the neck, around the back of the Ark. Bay, juniper, and huckleberry bushes lined the Cliff Walk, dwarfed by the perennial blast of wind. The Ark has not been owned by a Homer for more than 50 years. The path ends at a small cul-de-sac, but I proceeded down to the shoreline behind 3 Checkley Point where I found the spot Homer painted ''Sunset, Saco Bay'' (1896). This is Prouts Neck at its tamest. Here, the ledges gently slope up from Saco Bay, creating a natural platform where Homer could easily pose the two women seen in the painting.

From Checkley Point, I retraced my steps back past Homer's studio to a spot on the coast behind the second house to the east. Called Cannon Rock, the formation here resembles a small cannon that juts out of the cliffside. However, it might be easier to find this location by listening rather than searching for this obscured symbol. It is one of the loudest points on the neck. Waves slam into the rocks and then flush down a foamy whirlpool back to sea as Homer clearly depicts in ''Cannon Rock'' (1895). Like most of Homer's seascapes, the rocks in this painting are not an exact replica of the rocks on the shoreline. Homer often said he painted ''the world as it was,'' yet one visit to Prouts Neck will prove him false. Homer used his artistic license to emphasize, eliminate, simplify, and thus manipulate the elements for the sake of design.

Continuing eastward, the Cliff Walk begins to climb, eventually reaching an old stone tower called Seagate Tower. Here, the striated cliffs rise above the sea, offering fine views of the entire Neck. Homer called this point High Cliff as seen in ''High Cliff, Coast of Maine'' (1894). He was obviously enthused about this section of shoreline, since the wall of rock creates dramatic consequences each time a breaker rolls in with tremendous force.

The Cliff Walk gradually descends, crossing over a small wooden bridge to reach an area known as Kettle Cove. This shallow bay is home to hundreds of boulders. Homer loved this section of the Neck so much that he built a house ''to die in'' at 31 Winslow Homer Road, just north of the cove. It was Kettle Cove where he had made his first drawing of Prouts Neck (''The Honeymoon of Mr. and Mrs. Arthur B. Homer,'' 1875) and where, in 1909, Homer would create his final painting, ''Driftwood.'' Here, in his recurring theme of man facing the elements, a fisherman dressed in oilskins and a sou'wester hat struggles with a huge log in a storm. When Homer finished the work, he deliberately messed up his palette and hung it on the wall of his studio. This was his way of retiring.

The final stop on the Cliff Walk, at the end of a rocky beach, is Eastern Point. Just offshore, a blackened ledge, simply called Black Rock, stands firm against the perpetual battering of surf. In one of his most famous paintings of the 1900s, ''Eastern Point, Prouts Neck'' (1900), Homer shows a churning wave shooting upward from Black Rock, practically touching the top of the canvas. When Homer painted this picture he had just purchased this land from his brother, Arthur, becoming one of the few artists to actually own the subject of their work.

In the distance stood Richmond Island, just off Cape Elizabeth, and to my left was Prouts Neck and Scarboro beaches, two popular stretches of sand in the summer. Behind the beaches are bathhouses that Homer built for the people of the neck. Yes, it was Homer, the so-called ill-mannered hermit, who donated these structures purely as an altruistic gesture. Homer never swam or even lay on the beach. Remarkably, with all his love for the ocean, he never owned a boat at Prouts Neck. He rarely sailed, only on occasion with his brother Arthur. Thus, his interests in boats were merely pictorial, the exception being the canoes he owned to fish in the rivers of the Adirondacks or Canada.

I continued my tour, passing his house at 31 Winslow Homer Road. Back at Homer's studio, staring once again at the artist's portrait, I realized that Homer could have easily inserted himself as fisherman or wilderness guide into any of his paintings. A born naturalist with a wizened face that probably endured every facet of inclement weather known to man, Homer looks very much like the hardy men he often portrayed. He certainly had the same fondness for the outdoors. He felt a compulsion to paint the sea in its myriad moods, vividly expressing both the power and the tragic beauty of the northern Atlantic and its dire effects on the men who inhabited its shores. Homer biographer Lloyd Goodrich said it best when he wrote, ''Winslow Homer embodied the affirmative elements of the American spirit as no preceding artist had. He did for our painting what Walt Whitman did for our poetry - he made it native to our own earth and water.''

Newton-based writer Stephen Jermanok writes regularly on the arts for Art & Antiques and Town & Country. He's working on a travel book called ''Canvassing the Country'' that visits America's most famous art historical sites.

Published 05/02/99 in the Boston Suday Globe's Travel Section.