Bernhardt I Love New York

Katherine’s *Bernhardt I Love New York* distils the city’s mythos into a bold, contemporary icon. Fusing graphic precision with painterly nuance, the work layers crisp typography and emblematic imagery into a dynamic surface where edge and gesture coexist.

High-contrast colour and controlled saturation generate a cinematic immediacy, while subtle shifts in texture and finish reward close viewing, suggesting the accumulated patina of urban life. The composition’s confident frontal address recalls Pop strategies of repetition and mass culture, yet Katherine’s handling is more intimate—less quotation than reanimation.

As both homage and critique, the piece frames New York as a shared cultural shorthand and a lived, contested space. Its significance lies in this duality: a visually arresting celebration that also asks how cities become symbols.

Katherine Bernhardt (born 1975; Clayton, Missouri) is an American artist based in St. Louis, Missouri.

Work and career

Bernhardt received her MFA from the School of Visual Arts, New York, and her Bachelor of Fine Arts (BFA) from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Illinois.

Bernhardt is known for painting consumer symbols, tropical animals, and every day objects over bright flat fields of color in an expressionistic and almost abstract style. Previous bodies of work include Moroccan rug-inspired paintings and collages made in collaborations with her (now ex)husband Youssef Jdia, as …