life or from memory, never from photographs. Every piece begins in observation or imagination, shaped by what he has seen, studied, or held in his mind. He paints musicians warming up, dinner tables crowded with conversation, figures witnessing something remarkable, and portraits that carry a quiet kind of wisdom. His process often begins with questions about paint itself. How do blues shift when worked into skin? What happens when red moves into green? How does scale change a scene? How does a small or large brush alter the breath of the surface? He does not tell the viewer what to feel. A painting becomes complete only when someone brings their own meaning to it.

Speck grew up in a home filled with art and music. Unfinished canvases leaned against walls. Stories and songs drifted from room to room. People came and went, creating, talking, and sharing ideas. To be a Mellencamp was to create. As a child, Speck drew endlessly, and when he returned to painting as a teenager, he recognized himself as a painter.

At seventeen, he traveled to Greece and Italy for a gap-year art program. Standing before frescoes and classical portraits, he understood that this was the life he would devote himself to. Speck later studied under David Leffel and graduated from the Rhode Island School of Design in 2019.

As Speck grew into himself, his relationship with painting deepened. Sobriety opened that space. It gave him a quieter mind, a steadier hand, and a renewed desire to return to the canvas. Painting offered a new rhythm to his days, one steady and clear. That rhythm continues to guide his work.

To Speck, the work comes first. His devotion to the craft is fueled by curiosity and the many questions that lead him into each new painting. For him, art is not an arrival. Each canvas marks another beginning, another chance to see differently.

“I paint because there is always something I do not yet understand,” he says. “And that feels like enough.”