Vineyard-born artist Max Decker tends to mold his artistic personality to match his environment. His Island summers inspire classic landscape paintings, but come fall, his return to his home in Brooklyn seems to trigger a more aggressive and figurative form of expression.

“I guess by osmosis, what’s around you is kind of what you start producing,” said the artist. “When I’m in New York, it’s kind of loud. Here [on the Island], I get a little more atmospheric, a little more subdued.”

Mr. Decker was born on the Vineyard, attending the public charter school in West Tisbury before leaving to attend the Putney School, a progressive boarding school in Vermont.

“I escaped,” he joked. “I did a lot of art stuff [at Putney]. They had a good arts program. I really started painting there mostly. And then I came back here . . . five years ago and started doing landscapes.”

He has been flip-flopping seasonally between New York city and the Vineyard ever since.

“Every spring I just need to get back [to the Island] because the city is too hot, and after a winter of really, really focused work, it’s a little bit of a release. And then by the end of summer I’m so done with this place. September is great, but I’m ready to get back to the gritty, dirty town,” he said.

He describes his landscape paintings as “very traditional, based in Impressionism . . . I’m hesitant to try to deviate from that too much because I have such a polar opposite going in Brooklyn.” The landscapes began as an attempt to make some pocket money while avoiding more conventional summer jobs.

“It was either try to pull myself together and paint or mow lawns, or work at my dad’s place, at Tisbury Printer, which I didn’t want to do,” he said.

He broke into the Island art scene through the Artisans Festival, where he sold and displayed artwork for two summers. The festival allowed him the opportunity to share his artwork with tourists eager to find a souvenir that captured the beauty of the Vineyard, and to network with other Island artists.

“I was painting these tiny little paintings, and selling them for relatively cheap,” remembered Mr. Decker. “People bought a lot of them, and I just kind of met people through that.” One such person was Michael Hunter, owner of PikNik Art and Apparel in Oak Bluffs. Mr. Hunter bought five of Mr. Decker’s paintings that day, and the two struck up a conversation about a possible gallery show for the artwork.

After two summers, Mr. Decker decided not to re-enter the Artisans Festival. The vigorous preparation schedule became too taxing, and he preferred to create his artwork at a more relaxed pace.

“It was a really good thing to start out,” he said. “I would sell like 15 paintings every time, which is great, but then I’d have to repaint those 15 paintings for next week. But I’m glad I started that way because I met a ton of people.”

His relationship with Mr. Hunter ended up paying off. He began to show his work at PikNik four years ago, and has used the profits to support himself ever since. The success of his art sales has allowed him the freedom to pursue his many other interests, without worrying about catering to the demands of others. One such interest is music.

“[It’s] great because I can just go to Brooklyn and work on whatever I want to. I don’t feel like I’m missing out or leaving something behind when I decide to do music for the whole year and not paint at all. I just kind of follow the whim,” said Mr. Decker. His music is a collaboration with his roommate. “We have a little recording [area] set up in the basement, and we make it sound like a band but it’s really just two of us. We’re trying to figure out how to play live, but it proves to be more difficult,” he admitted with a smile.

The city atmosphere also facilitates a different kind of painting.

“When I’m in Brooklyn, that’s when I do the other paintings. It’s hard to find a tree in Brooklyn,” he joked, noting the difficulty of painting landscapes there. “The Brooklyn [work] is high contrast. It’s figures, there are no real landscapes. It’s more like collage. It’s based in photography and sculpture, but the final product happens to be painting.”

He has shown his city work here on occasion, but he admits that most Island art enthusiasts find it a bit off-putting. “People are usually like, ‘Oh that’s weird,’ he laughed. “[But] it’s all exactly what I want to do. I don’t have to worry about selling it or anything like that . . . It’s almost a relief not to be pinned to doing one thing.”

His versatile talents and adaptable personality have allowed him the freedom to pursue his profusion of artistic interests on his own schedule, and to create artwork he now feels proud of.

“I know five years ago, I didn’t really plan on still doing this. But I’ve kind of gotten to a point where I like the paintings more. When I started it was definitely about ‘I’m going to sell some paintings to tourists.’ Now I try to make them meaningful to me, something that I would hang on my wall,” he said.

Max Decker’s Early Summer show continues at PikNik Gallery at 99 Dukes County avenue in Oak Bluffs through July 15. His Fusion Show begins August 29.