Every Wednesday morning and Thursday evening, Orleans artist Taylor Fox breaks down his studio at The 204 — the cultural center in Harwich — pushing furniture and supplies to the perimeter. He positions a softbox light fixture in the front of the room next to a wooden platform that holds an armchair draped with a tan blanket.
Fox will soon be joined by a group of painters, there to capture the likeness of a local resident sitting on this makeshift throne.
Most of the artists who come are regulars, but there are drop-ins, too. When Rosalie Nadeau, one of the regulars and a family friend, invited me to model last fall, I sat as still as I could for hours, letting my eyes focus and unfocus as each person followed the contours of my face with a brush. And at the end of the session, there were seven different versions of me peering out from the easels.
Welcoming ordinary folks to pose is part of Fox’s point: his idea is to make a visual record of people — as many as he can — living on the Cape at this moment in time.
“A friend who sat told me it’s a lot about the experience,” he says. “I thought it was because they wanted my art.” I certainly wanted his art and happily accepted the portrait — he gives them away to sitters who want to take theirs home. The paintings that don’t go home with models stay in his studio at the former middle school, now an arts center. It has wide-ranging programs and 36 studios, all converted classrooms. Fittingly, Fox’s studio was the art room. The 204 will have a show featuring the group’s work in September.
Fox started the twice-weekly portrait sessions in 2023. He posts each portrait on Instagram with a quick caption about the subject. Social media tends to be how he finds people to sit as well. “One connection after another, one degree of separation,” is how he describes finding models.
For him, portraiture is an exercise in connection. “I am always blown away by the person before me, their personality and life lived, showing millions of experiences distilled into the thousands of moments that we witness and then try and record in paint or pencil,” he says. “Sometimes you get the likeness and sometimes it doesn’t come; that can be for any number of reasons, but it is rarely, if ever, the sitter.”
Scrolling through his account, you may spot a few familiar faces. WOMR’s D.J. Fred (Fred Boak) is there in his signature bowtie along with Provincetown painter Pete Hocking (and his long beard) as well as Dennis Minsky, who writes “The Year-Rounder” column in this newspaper. And there are plenty of other folks whose names you aren’t sure of but whose faces elicit a twinge of recognition; maybe you know them from the grocery store or from waiting in line at the post office.
Having attended Paul Schulenburg’s portrait group in Eastham off and on for 15 years, Fox had a few goals in mind for his own. Besides painting everyone he could, he wanted to spend time with other artists, and he also wanted to subsidize his studio rent. Artists pay $25 to attend, with a maximum of seven at any given session to ensure everyone has room to work.
“I have learned how close-knit the Cape is, the art community in particular, and how many families are interconnected,” says Fox of his portrait project. “It makes the world a little less large — and that’s why I live on the narrowland.”
Editor’s note: Because of a reporting error, a photo caption in an earlier version of this article, published in print on June 5, incorrectly identified the model sitting for a portrait by Taylor Fox as Tom Fettig.
