Artist Max Decker has made some major changes in his life recently. After living in Brooklyn for five years, focusing on a music career, the Island native moved back to Martha’s Vineyard in 2017 and returned to painting full-time. Three years ago, he and his wife also welcomed their first child.
Now Decker is undergoing another change — this time, an artistic one. After making his mark as a landscape painter, Decker is now looking inward, focusing on more intimate, personal subjects for inspiration. The paintings that are included in a three-person show, currently hanging at the Field Gallery in West Tisbury, are primarily interior scenes, along with a couple of still lifes.
“I love doing landscapes,” says Decker, “but recently I started just painting the things I see every day instead of going out to the picture-postcard scenes. I just started with simple everyday things, mostly done from photographs — little candid moments — interior, domestic life.”
The scenes are little narrative snapshots. There’s a somewhat voyeuristic quality to the domestic scenes — the subjects are often captured seemingly unaware of a witness to their simple pursuits, which gives the scenes a very intimate and comforting aspect.
Among the portraits are one of Decker’s mother helping her grandson wash up at the sink, as seen through an open doorway. This sort of outside observer perspective is continued with one titled “Screen Door,” where a woman is pictured standing at the back door as depicted from outside of the house.
The same woman (Decker’s wife) appears in many of the domestic scenes, such as one where she can be glimpsed leaning over their child’s crib, another where she is facing away from the viewer, wearing a robe, curled up sleepily on a bed, and another where she is rubbing her eyes, her face obscured by her hands, while sitting at a table laden with daffodils.
In every case, the subject’s face is hidden or rendered very vaguely, leaving the images open to speculation. For example, in “In the Evening,” a colorful bunch of cut flowers sitting on a blue table is the focal point, while a woman is pictured standing behind the table, shown from the neck up, her long brown hair hanging down past her shoulders. In “Key Lime Pie,” just the subject’s hands are visible, cutting into the pie.
This ambiguity is part of the paintings’ appeal. Decker mentions the work of Edward Hopper, who tended to obscure his subjects, hiding their faces, yet somehow capturing an emotional quality.
“There’s kind of a fine line between what you want people to look at,” says Decker. “You want them to be able to read their own narrative into the work.”
Although his focus has changed from the rather impersonal — landscapes — to the more intimate — domestic scenes — Decker still displays a similar style, with a somewhat hazy perspective that adds a sense of mystery, and clearly defined focal points.
While his approach has remained the same, Decker finds that more than just the subject matter has provided him with new challenges. “I’ve found that the switch to interior subject matter has entirely changed my palette,” he says. “With natural objects outside, I was used to using these sort of muted, earth tones. Inside you get all of these artificial surfaces and colors.”
Still, there’s an appealing softness to the newer work. And, it seems, more of the artist is being revealed. “This is a big change for me,” says Decker. “It feels more honest than the stuff I had been doing. It adds a psychological aspect to the work.”
After spending almost a decade focusing on his music as a means of personal expression, Decker is finding a new way to look at his work as a visual artist. “Now after putting it down for a while, I came back to it thinking, ‘How am I going to do this for the rest of my life?’ I’m coming back with a new respect for the whole process — with a new depth that I’ve never explored before.”
Max Decker’s work will be featured, along with that of Traeger di Pietro and Benjamin M. Johnson, at the Field Gallery through the end of the month.