The latest installment in the National Portrait Gallery’s Portraiture Now series, which showcases work by 21st century portrait artists, gets to the heart of what it means to belong to a community. Portraiture Now: Communities features work by three painters whose portraits indicate there’s more to relationships than virtually asking someone to be your friend and tagging them in photos. There are the communities we’re born into and the communities we choose to be part of, and the artists here explore those different types of relationships.

Rose Frantzen, a painter from Maquoketa, Iowa, returned to her hometown to paint a cross-section of Maquoketa residents. She painted 180 residents using the alla prima technique; wet on wet painting, usually done in one sitting; which despite being done over two years, gives the sense that they were all painted in a day.

Jim Torok’s small-scale paintings are 12” by 12” and as detailed as photographs. Works from two series on display — some are of artist friends from New York and others are members of an extended family from Colorado — suggest two very different communities. The family portraits are arranged by immediate family, and the relationships are more obvious given the resemblance. But as we see from Torok, neither type of community is more important than the other.