The Unambiguous Margaret Fox
Her daydream is the quiet after the storm
by laura raskin independent arts writer


Margaret Fox is not making a statement about the invasion

The 'Sconset artist Margaret Fox, above, in her neighbor's house last week, where she was completing the framing for her second annual show at the Old Spouter Gallery, opening Friday, July 22. A reception will be held from 6 to 8 p.m.

of man on nature. She is not mourning the days when

Nantucket’s distance from the shore served as a deterrence rather than as bait, nor is she raising her fist in solidarity about the building of new yacht club — pro or con.

She actually thinks concrete, telephone poles and water towers are quite beautiful and she paints them in oils, often when they converge with the varied landscape of Nantucket, solely for that reason.

Fox's painting "No Peeking," right, depicts the barn where the new yacht club is poised to be built.

“I have no interest in painting pretty scenes,” said Fox in an interview over lemon seltzers in the backyard of her ’Sconset guest cottage last week, where she and her husband have moved while they rent their main house for the summer. “I’m always looking for something off. I’m always looking for man intruding on nature. I’m not making a statement.”

She shrugs and laughs.

“They catch the light and do neat things,” she said of transformers and generators – the necessities of man’s pretty life, not the objects meant to be appreciated. “Concrete’s a lot easier to paint than a tree, and it speaks to me,” she said.

Art has always spoken to Fox, who is petite and exudes an unburdened youth. She talks about her hiatus from, and her circuitous route back to art, without high drama. She is content, and reassuringly irreverent.

“I try to portray my subjects in as straightforward a manner as possible without idealizing them,” she writes in her artist’s statement, and the same could be said of her presentation of herself.

It is only in the last 10 years that Fox has been devoted to her artwork, and really only the last two that she has gotten down to business. Last year was her first gallery show ever, at the Old Spouter Gallery, and her new work debuts there this Friday, July 22.

Born and raised in New York, art class was always Fox’s favorite and she studied art and art history at the University of Pennsylvania. An offbeat high school in Vermont, the Putney School, was more Fox’s style than the career that ensued.

“I was completely not geared toward the corporate side of life,” said Fox, but that was her routine for many years in Manhattan where she was a benefits consultant.

“I was not happy in that lifestyle,” she said, before clarifying: “I was really happy for a long time in the 80s. I lived in New York, got dressed up every day to go to work at these really corporate jobs. It just wasn’t going to be for me.”

Asked to explain how it happened and Fox said that it was circumstance and perhaps not believing she could do otherwise.

“I wanted to live in New York and in order to do that, I had to have steady work,” she said. Her first job was at a law firm. “I did well and became part of that world.” Later she said: “Art was always my favorite class. I just didn’t think I had the chops or, for whatever reason, I didn’t do it until now.”

Although Fox continued to take art classes in New York, her return to her first love and Nantucket has much to do with her incredibly good apartment karma.

For years she lived in a “beautiful penthouse apartment” — an illegal sublet — until her cover was blown.

Luckily, a relationship that had been growing during rides up and down the elevator in her building with another resident was just beginning to get more serious.

“I lost my great apartment and moved in with him,” said Fox of her husband Patrick Fox. The two shared more than a stoop, though. Fox had spent summers on Nantucket as a child with cousins, who were yearround residents, even waitressing at the Skipper. Patrick had been coming to Nantucket for years to visit friends and eventually bought a house in ’Sconset.

“I always loved it,” said Fox of Nantucket. “I always felt a connection here. I was always happy here. I suppose there were certain times I fantasized about being here, but it wasn’t my dream.”

When Fox married Patrick 10 years ago, after a six-year courtship, she realized she could make a change.

“I realized I could spend more time (on the island) and some of the financial pressure was lifted,” she said. “It wasn’t until a few years ago that I really decided to work at (being an artist), make it full time.”

Now the Foxes split their time between an apartment (another great one) on the upper west side of Manhattan and ’Sconset. Patrick plays the piano at the Summer House. Fox abandoned a ceramic tile making business and began to paint full time.

She maintains a studio in her basement – a whitewashed place where she moves her easel to the door to get the natural light. A small study of her husband scrubbing dishes in their New York apartment is tacked to one of the bulletin boards.

It was over the winter in New York that Fox painted Nantucket’s summer in a rented studio in Harlem (more karma).

“It was so beautiful. It was huge and gorgeous, almost enough to make me consider living in New York full time,” she said. “It was so great to have this studio, get up every morning and work. I almost painted more there. It was enough of a separation where I couldn’t just take a break and decide to have a cup of coffee with Patrick.”

Although Fox admits that Codfish Park holds eternal lure for her, there are a few New York scenes that she would like to paint. The recent show of a Penn professor and early mentor, Rackstraw Downs, also has Fox thinking that she would like to paint interiors again. Downs has a series from the Music Hall at Snug Harbor, and Fox has been thinking about the Unitarian Church.

The New York landscape that calls to Fox is not so different from her version of Nantucket – particularly a New Jersey scene. The Meadowlands is an odd industrial wasteland in the midst of wetlands that Fox has only seen from a fleeting train or the highway.

“Every time I drive by there, I’m like, ‘I want to do this.’ It’s like a wasteland, but it’s really beautiful,” she said.

Since Fox decided to devote her time to her art, it has been met with almost immediate enthusiasm.

When she pulled up to the Old Spouter Gallery last year with paintings in her backseat, owner Kathleen Walsh agreed to see them, even though she normally goes through a more formal process before choosing artists.

“When she brought them in, I just thought ‘Wow. These are really cool,’” said Walsh, who immediately chose Fox to fill a gap in her summer line-up. “I like her sensibility. It’s like there are people around, but there aren’t. It’s twilighty.”

Walsh is right. Fox describes her work as “quiet,” but it is not as simple as that. It is the quiet after movement, or right before – placid. Something has been disturbed recently, and Fox is gone before getting caught in it, or she slips in just after.

“Her show sold out,” said Walsh of last year. “For her to sell out, that was pretty wild.”

Sarah Alger, a ’Sconset resident, has two of Fox’s paintings in a collection of other Nantucket artists.

“I think her work is really interesting because it’s multi-dimensional in that you can look at the work and take it as it is at face value — ‘Oh, that’s a house in ’Sconset.’ It’s a recognizable piece of Nantucket, so it’s great to look at, but that’s not all there is to it,” said Alger. “It goes well beyond that. She has a great way of using light and shadow in ways that are evocative of different moods. In some ways, her work is sort of mysterious.”

Fox is happy and relaxed when painting. Time flies by, as it has to in sheer concentration, and she likes that.

Still, she is not oblivious to the fact that she was able to make a full circle, a feat which few manage without painful sidesteps. She thinks about this when she wakes up in the morning.

“It’s like living out a dream for me. It was sort of a daydream that this would be my life,” said Fox.

There will be a gallery opening for Margaret Fox’s show at the Old Spouter Gallery 118 Orange St., on Friday, July 22, from 6 to 8 p.m. For more information, call 325-9988.

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