Dear New York,

You know when you wake up from a dream and most of it slips away, but you’re left just with a feeling that’s nearly impossible to put into words?

That’s what these paintings are. They’re the bright spots that shine through and have stuck with me through the years. They’re the best and also the bittersweet – the moments that defined years of my life and cemented my love affair with this city.

Dear New York, I think about you all the time. It feels like a long time that I’ve been away.

I love London, but New York is alive and bright and buzzy in a way no other city is.

These paintings have poured out of me with all the fondness and nostalgia I carry for New York. And for the first time, I’ve used color this way – to celebrate the vibrancy that defines this city.

This show is important to me because it feels like coming home. Each painting is a memory of mine – some titled with specific dates or locations – and this exhibition has become a love letter to New York City and the life I lived here.

Whether you’ve lived in New York for decades or today is your first visit, I hope you see in these pieces a bit of the magic that makes this place and its people so incredibly special.

And to all of you who were a big part of what made this place so dear to me: you’re what makes it still feel like home.

You’re all somewhere in these paintings too.

All my love,

Cat

Cat Spilman (b. 1990) is now based in London, UK, but in her heart she is forever a New Yorker. She moved to New York when she was 18 to go to School of Visual Arts, located just a few blocks east of Isabel Sullivan Gallery where she is having her first US solo show “Dear New York”. After graduation she had nearly a decade-long career painting sets for film and television in New York.

In 2020, a personal loss brought her to the UK where she turned to painting. What started as a deeply personal process and a private cathartic practice gradually became her full-time artistic pursuit and has grown into a body of work that resonates worldwide. Her work has been exhibited in galleries in London, New York, Berlin, Copenhagen, Busan, Barcelona, Sydney, Miami and Mauritius. This exhibition is her homecoming show and love letter to New York City.