Overstimulated and In Love: How I Lost and Found My Mind in New York City
The Art Story #17
Ever fallen for a city so hard it left you dizzy? That’s me and New York — again.
A place where you feel like you’ll rule the world before lunch… and burn out right after.
It gives endlessly, then asks for everything back.
As I leave New York, I’m trying to bottle the impossible. This city fed me again — visually, emotionally, creatively — like no other. If you wanted, you could spend eight-plus hours a day just looking at new art. Honestly, people do. That could be a real job: full-time art watcher. (Someone call HR?)
NYC made me feel like the best version of myself — wide-eyed, overstimulated, in constant motion. It’s also exhausting. There’s beauty everywhere, but also noise — literal and psychic. Above ground, the city dazzles. Below ground, the subway steals a piece of your soul. And yet… I’d do it all again. I’ll lose myself in the chaos — just to come closer to who I really am. New York — I love U.
Of course, I’m not the only one seduced by this overwhelming city and trying to navigate it with grace. Artists have been attempting to capture its chaos, energy, and rhythm for decades. Here’s how they tried to make sense of it all — on canvas.
When Piet Mondrian — the master of grids and order — moved to NYC, it was like the streets finally matched his brain. From twisty Dutch alleys to the Manhattan grid — he clicked into place. Broadway Boogie Woogie wasn’t just abstract — it was a love letter to the city’s jazz, pace, and light. His rigid lines loosened. His palette brightened and black lines disappeared. The city got into his bones. It got into mine, too. (P.S. Thank you, Small’s, Blue Note, Arthur’s Tavern — for jazz that still slaps like for Mondrian.)
When I’m underground, I try to channel Keith Haring. His canvases weren’t in museums — they were on subway walls. His joy, his politics, his colours — they help me survive yet another long ride.
And one of mine forever favorites is Edward Hopper’s Nighthawks, with all his loneliness, gave us — a late-night NYC scene with silence so loud you can hear the coffee pot.
You know who else captured NYC’s dreamy strangeness? Adolf Dehn. His cityscapes are foggy, glowing, touched with ghosts — like a memory you can’t stop hunting for to repeat.
And even Georgia O’Keeffe, queen of desert blooms, gave New York her brush.
She once said the city made her feel “a little dizzy” — but she couldn’t look away.
Honestly? Same. Dizzy from input. Dizzy from the opportunities. Dizzy from the dreams of what you’ll do next time. (Speaking of which — the Google Pin for my next time? The Pollock–Krasner House on Long Island. Their wild, complicated love story? That’s a whole other essay!)
Maybe that’s the real takeaway: art doesn’t thrive from quiet — and neither do we. It’s when the world overstimulates us that we get to choose who we really are, to root deeper and rise higher. Or to dissolve into the chaos... What do you choose?
Art needs more eyes — and so does this blog.
It’s free to read, but only grows if it travels.
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Hi! Thank you for sharing this New York energy.
I love the idea that art doesn’t thrive in silence.
Art may be born as a form of resistance — not just to the brutality and chaos of the big city, but to the rawness of life itself.
Reality, in its purest form, can be unbearable. Truth, overwhelming. As Nietzsche wrote, we have art in order not to perish from the truth.