Trey Speegle, The Future Was Better, 2012, (diptych) 40 x 120", archival pigment, house paint on canvas

What Are You Waiting For?

Trey Speegle #FiftyQuestions

What event or factor in your life has been the most pivotal in your decision to become an artist?
Quitting a high-paying job as Art Director for Us Weekly to make art full-time in 2005. A few weeks later my partner of nine years, said “let’s take a break” so suddenly I had no job, no income, no relationship, no house in the country. My first exhibit after that was called “What Are You Waiting For?”

What artist do you consider most influential to your ongoing development as an artist?
I would say Warhol, but that’ isn’t really ongoing. Ongoing? Me.

What has been the most significant challenge you’ve faced that you overcame to continue your art practice?
Just keeping it all going. I have a studio and a gallery in upstate New York and Merida, Mexico. I have no idea how that is going to work, but I’ll figure it out.

Describe your ideal workspace.
Next to my new place in Mexico, which has a main house with a studio and gallery space with a separate street entrance. There I plan to build my ideal workspace. A big air-conditioned, concrete cube.

What one sentence do you hope describes how your art practice will be recorded in history, and why?
Trey Speegle’s pop, paint by number aesthetic took a decades-old practice and made it modern.

In thinking of the lulls and gaps or lost places in your practice over the years, who or what has re-energized you?
My new studio and gallery in Mexico. I’m not working in it yet, but the thought of it energizes me.

What project of yours do you personally consider your most satisfying, and why – regardless of external support or accolades?
The one I’m just beginning now.

Who of all the artists who have ever lived would you most love to share your work with? And why?
James Ensor. He did a drawing of a skeleton titled Me on my 100th birthday. We were born on the same day, April 13, 100 years apart. His 100th was the day I was born.

If you could travel in time, within what era or milieu would you most like to have an artist residency? And why?
The 50s. I would make some great work, knowing what I know now. Pre-pop conceptualism.

What is you current guiding motivation to work and/or express yourself?
The creative impulse. I was born with it.

Who or what would you most like to collaborate with?
A young artist called Haelo. He’s 11. We are starting a collaboration.

Do you have a relationship with the distant future – in other words, are you making artwork that bears a message or impact for coming generations?
Only time will tell.

Can you recall your first memory of bliss in self-expression?
No.

Who has been your greatest mentor, living or dead, real or imaginary?
Comedy writer Michael O’Donoghue. I helped him mount a paint by number exhibit 30 years ago…changed the course of my life. Plus he was a great appreciator of all the oddities of life.

Do you have a relationship with an animal in your life that influences your art process?
My 17 and a half year-old Brussels Griffon, Lamonte. He’s been around me while creating for a long time. I don’t know what I’ll do without him.

What unchangeable fact has been most frustrating to you as an artist?
Even an above-average person has a very limited relationship with art. And even people with great taste and styles often don’t collect.

What is your artistic relationship to loss? Either personal loss, or lost works of art, or other kinds of loss?
Life is loss. For my show What Are You Waiting For? in ‘08 I created a large-scale collage titled, WILL IT END IN TEARS (It Always Does).

When does Joy tend to visit you?
Like most people, it just comes and goes…

If you have one goal for change in your artistic field, what would it be?
Complete all the shows and bodies of work I have planned before the clock runs out.

How has your years in artmaking affected or influenced your sense of self?
Artists have carte blanche to do just about anything they choose.

What do you suspect is your most powerful artistic blessing? Or blessing in general?
I can create punchy visuals.

If you could create a new public institution for your field, what would its mission be?
I do want to create a foundation and a paint by number museum to connect people and art in a way most institutions fail to.

How do you feel most often misunderstood or misperceived, either as an artist or in your work itself?
People get stuck on paint by number or kitsch and can dismiss the work without really looking.

How important is it to you that others connect and understand and appreciate your work?
I do like people to get something from the work but that’s up to them really, not me.

What is your relationship to criticism?
Depends on who’s doing to the criticizing.

What is your relationship to praise?
Again, depends on who is doing the praising.

What is your relationship to your audience, real or imaginary?
I think we have a healthy relationship.

What makes you most likely to shut down or go into dormancy as an artist?
Apathy.

Do you have a particular skill or knack of which you are most secretly proud? Something you feel you can do that few others can, no matter how small?
Like I said, I can create punchy visuals.

Describe the greatest gift someone has given to you that invigorated your artistic expression?
Michael O’Donoghue’s widow gave me his paint by number collection. Changed my life. I grew it, loaned part of it to the Smithsonian for a retrospective 20 years ago and now have over 3000. One of the largest collections in the world.

If you could be anything besides an artist in human form, what would you like to be?
Matter cannot be created or destroyed, I’m already everything.

What would be the most thrilling moment or situation in timespace to find your art being enjoyed?
My Whitney retrospective while I’m still in human form.

Trey Speegle - Exactly — Trey Speegle, *Exactly*, 2012. 40 x 60″ archival pigment and house paint on canvas. Private collection.

About Trey Speegle

The original “New Happy Now” was silkscreened in an edition of 100 on handkerchiefs and sent out by mail as my New Year’s message for 1984. I’m not sure where the phrase came from at the time, but it still holds up for me. It’s one of those ubiquitous phrases I employ in my work. I’m happy it’s once again renewed with this special edition.

Using one of the world’s largest collections of vintage paint-by-number paintings (3000+) artist Trey Speegle uses humor, affirmations and word play that resonate with a broad, pop appeal. Speegle has collaborated with Stella McCartney, Squarespace, Anthropologie Home, Armorlux, Fred Perry, PAOM, Jonathan Adler and Fringe Studios. In 2014, he created a mural in collaboration with Michelle Obama’s Partnership for a Healthy America. In 2016 Regan Arts released Trey’s book Transform Your Life with Color By Number and in 2021 Speegle published a book of his photographs, Trey Speegle: 80s Polaroids. His Speegle Studio, The RePOP Shop and Gallery 52 are housed in a former gas station in Jeffersonville, New York in the Catskill Mountains. He divides his time between Upstate New York and Merida, Mexico where he has a second home, studio & gallery space.