News — Troy Lee

Troy Lee’s expressive and intimate paintings interrogate the Black American experience. The Chicago native — one of 13 artists exhibiting with Vertical Gallery at this year’s Aqua Art Miami — was known as Troy Scat prior to March 2025’s powerful ‘We From the Heavens,’ a solo showcase inspired by subtle but significant moments nestled deep within his favorite movies, television series, music videos and viral clips. The latest installment of our web-exclusive Artist Spotlight series reveals how Troy’s return to the Windy City shaped his newest work, and identifies what being an artist really means. 

Vertical Gallery: What can we expect from the pieces you’re showing at Aqua?

Troy Lee: This new body of work mashes different things that I like to do within my artistic practice. For a long time, I've been trying to hone in on a style, and right now, I'm in a place where I'm starting to accept that it's best for me to not focus on style, but concentrate on the message and trust in my taste. Because everything that I do, no matter the style, has my hand and voice in it. 

I love illustration, and I love sketches — I love doing them, and I love when other artists do them. The work I’m bringing to Miami is mostly acrylic on canvas, but I'm also sketching on the canvas with pencil and graphite. For a long time, I considered that to be against the rules, so to speak. But I'm in a space where I'm gonna just do what I want, and make it work. 

It's a lot different from the ‘We From the Heavens’ show, where I pretty much knew what each piece was gonna look like at the beginning of the process. There was an overall idea, a scene that I liked, and a [reference photo] right there. With this new work, I’m starting with only about 30 percent of the idea. I might throw in a collage — I’ve also been finding ways to get a watercolor effect without using watercolor paints. That other 70 percent of the idea comes from what I'm feeling in the moment. I’m creating in a more intuitive way.

What themes and motifs are you exploring this time around?

This new work is mostly white backgrounds, but they're heavily layered, and you can see that. There's a red base to each painting, and I layer the background with different colors and abstract marks and stuff like that. Then I paint white over everything, but I purposefully leave some of those marks to bleed through. It symbolizes mistakes — you make a mistake, you fix it and you move on from it. Making mistakes and correcting them or attempting to correct them is a theme in most of my new work. 

In a few of the new works I’m using childhood anime and cartoon characters to express vulnerable ideas and cultivate a certain tone. A cartoon like ‘Family Guy’ uses the dog or the baby to say the craziest stuff, because when an adult says those things, you receive it a different way. It’s digestible if it's a baby saying that stuff. There's also arrows in this new work. I’ve been using that as a way to address some ideas on love, or connection.

Another motif in my newer paintings is the tallies [i.e., tally marks or hash marks for keeping count]. This is the “undefeated” symbol, you know? Every day that I wake up is a reminder that I'm undefeated — that as long as you're still breathing, you can keep going. I'm just tallying up everything… tallying up life. 

You were born and raised on Chicago’s South Side. Seven years ago, you relocated to Los Angeles, and then a few months ago, you moved back. How is returning to Chicago impacting the work you’re creating?

It’s playing a big part. I’ve been doing a lot of reflection. In L.A., I rarely made space or time to sit back and reflect, but being here at home… life hits a lot different. 

It’s why I’ve been creating more intuitively — just doing whatever comes to mind and figuring it out. I don't think I've ever been in a situation where I felt I could really do that, and I'm finding that this process of baring my soul is the way that I want to move forward with any painting that I do from now on. 

You bared your soul with ‘We From the Heavens,’ too. That kind of raw honesty must take its toll. How — and more importantly, why — are you doing it this way?

Well, as an artist, that's just what you have to do, you know what I mean? I wouldn't be an artist if I couldn't do that.

The print version of your piece “A Flower Undimmed” was featured in a recent episode of FX Networks’ ‘The Bear.’ How did that come about?

My friend Bianca Pastel recommended me. Someone from ‘The Bear’ came and saw my work, and they reached out to me after. The people that work for the show couldn't tell me if it was gonna be aired, or when it was gonna be aired. Friends saw it before I did, and sent me [messages] like “I didn't know you were on ‘The Bear!’” 

It was really dope, but at first, I didn't celebrate it like I wanted to celebrate it — like I should have celebrated it. I have some peers and some mentors who’ve had their work featured in movies or on TV shows multiple times, so naturally, I'm comparing myself to them, and you know what they say: comparison is the thief of joy. Once I started to think “So-and-so has done that three times already, I need to catch up,” I didn't have as much appreciation for it. I don't know what made me snap out of it, but eventually, I did. 

What do you hope the Miami audience takes away from experiencing your work?

This is my first show in Miami, so I'm really excited. I don't really have any intentions on what the audience takes away from it. There is a concept, but it's mostly about feeling. That’s what I care about. 

I think all of my art is open to interpretation, but with this new stuff, there's a lot more abstract mark-making, and someone who looks at it might see something totally different than what I was feeling when I was creating it. A lot of people, including me, love to know the artist's thoughts behind their paintings, and I'm happy to provide some commentary. But I just hope that the audience feels something — something familiar. Something they can relate to, in their own way.

Vertical Gallery will feature six new paintings from Troy Lee (@_troy.lee_) at Aqua Art Miami, running December 3-7. Email sales@verticalgallery.com for the collector preview.

What’s in a name? Multitudes — if you’re Troy Lee.

Troy, whose breakthrough solo showcase ‘We From the Heavens’ runs at Vertical Gallery through Saturday, March 29, previously exhibited in our space under the alias Troy Scat. You may have seen his contributions to Vertical group shows like 2021’s ‘#INK,’ its 2022 sequel and 2024’s 11-year anniversary celebration, where the Troy Scat signature adorned lush, sensual portraits of men wreathed in flowers and women draped in nothing at all.  

“Troy Scat was my rebel artist's name,” Troy tells Vertical. “I had some beef with my dad. We didn't always see eye to eye, and I got into a lot of trouble. At one point, my dad was like ‘You ruined my name’ and stuff like that. So I wanted to change my name to the worst name that I could think of. I chose ‘Scat’ because it could mean jazz, like a vocal performance, or it could mean cow dung. For a while, I had that name just out of spite.”

Make no mistake, however: Troy’s father, a minister on Chicago’s South Side, is no villain in his son’s story. In fact, he’s directly responsible for steering 15-year-old Troy into the Little Black Pearl-sponsored after-school art program where he met painter, muralist and longtime mentor Hebru Brantley. 

Troy’s relationship with his father continues to improve and evolve all these years later, thanks in part to the soul-searching that accompanied the creation of ‘We From the Heavens,’ which examines the perceptions and realities confronting Black American males across the generations — how they’re seen in the media, and how they see themselves in the mirror. 

“Now that I’m older, I'm able to look at him as a human man, and step outside of looking at him as just a dad,” Troy says. “It ties in with this body of work, where I'm taking a step back and looking at people for who they are — the circumstances that they're in, and what they're doing to exist and survive.”

The Troy Scat moniker has ceased to be, however. 

“Lee is my middle name, and it's also my dad's middle name, and it's also my brother's middle name. So I decided to change my name to Troy Lee, because that's more fitting of who I am, and where I come from,” Troy says. “I'm not feeling so spiteful anymore.”

VIEW THE EXHIBITION HERE

Vertical Gallery is very proud to present ‘We From the Heavens,’ a solo showcase for Chicago-born, Los Angeles-based painter and illustrator Troy Lee.

‘We From the Heavens,’ which runs March 7-29 at Vertical’s flagship West Town location (2006 W. Chicago Ave. #1R; enter via the alley off Damen Ave.), heralds a daring new chapter in Lee’s career and creative evolution, shifting the artist’s emphasis from feminine sexuality to masculine vulnerability. The exhibit’s soul-baring paintings and sketches aggressively interrogate the perceptions and realities confronting Black men in contemporary America — how they’re seen in the media, and how they see themselves in the mirror. 

“My overall thing with this show is that I want to restore innocence to the Black body,” says Lee, who recently shed his longtime creative alias Troy Scat. “Most of my past work is centered around the celebration of women, but for this show, I decided to stir up conversations about men loving themselves — what's toxic masculinity, what's healthy masculinity, and what we can do to change these things.”

‘We From the Heavens’ embraces Black males of all ages, depicting some of them with wings; halo-like circles are another recurring motif. Many of the pieces draw inspiration from subtle but significant moments nestled deep within Lee’s favorite movies, television series, music videos and viral clips, a smorgasbord of sources stretching from the high school basketball dramedy Sunset Park to the bonkers science fiction saga The Fifth Element. 

“The characters I’m referencing often are seen as villains in their original context. But I'm taking them out of that context, and magnifying the poetry of moments a lot of people may have missed,” Lee explains. “Take [the 2012 found footage-style drama] Snow on tha Bluff. The protagonist is a drug dealer. A lot of people see him as a bad guy. But there is a scene where he plays with his kid, and ultimately, that kid is who he's doing all of this other stuff for. I wanted to highlight that, because it's something that resonated with me.” 

‘We From the Heavens’ follows a period of intense self-evaluation, guided in part by Lee’s immersion in the writings of theorist, educator and social critic bell hooks. “I recognized that I didn't show as much appreciation for myself as I claim to with women,” he says. “I think when it comes to fully appreciating anyone else, it starts with the self. I've learned to give myself some grace.” 

‘We From the Heavens’ also signals changes in Lee’s artistic mindset. “This is the time where I'm stepping out of my comfort zone as far as subject matter and as far as painting style,” he says. “Usually I'm very tight when it comes to my work. I'm a Libra, so aesthetics is very important to me, and I like to be in control when it comes to how something looks. But over the past year I've gotten a little bit looser, and focused more on getting the idea out, rather than having it look perfect. With this show, there's been a lot of letting go.”

‘We From the Heavens’ brings Lee back to Chicago five years after he left the city to live and work in southern California. The native South Sider drew incessantly throughout childhood, and at age 15 he signed up for a Little Black Pearl-sponsored after-school art program, studying under the tutelage of painter and muralist Hebru Brantley, a longtime mentor. Lee interned for Brantley while attending the Art Institute of Chicago, eventually dropping out to focus on his professional pursuits; a pair of local solo exhibits, ‘Gaze’ and ‘Peer,’ preceded his Vertical debut, the 2021 group show ‘#INK.’ Lee subsequently appeared at the Vertical Project Space location’s one-year anniversary group show, followed in 2022 by ‘#INK2’ and in 2024 by Vertical’s 11-year anniversary group show. 

Vertical Gallery launches ‘We From the Heavens’ Friday, March 7, with an opening reception from 5:00 to 8:00 p.m.