As you know, Team Cat Art Show loves to delve into the annals of cat art hiss-tory and revisit some of our favorite works. This time, we reached out to a selection of artists previously featured in Cat Art Show exhibitions, along with a few new favorites whose work ventures into feline territory.
The brief? To share their favorite cat artworks of all-time, along with one of their own if they felt so inclined; where they did not, we selected one on their behalf. Here are the results…
LOLA DUPRE
Carl Kahler, My Wife’s Lovers, 1891
Oil on canvas
6 x 8.5 feet
“It’s hard to pick a favorite from art history, but maybe My Wife’s Lovers by Carl Kahler. I love the grand vision, it is almost like a collage with a somewhat impossible composition. Impossible, but brilliant.”
Lola Dupre, Charlie VIII, even softer, 2018
Collage
8.2 x 11.6 inches
Dupre picked this as her favorite work of her beloved cat Charlie: “This collage is from a photo taken soon after we adopted Charlie. He was still feeling a bit unsure about his new home.”
MARC DENNIS
Jean Baptiste-Simeon Chardin, Still Life with Cat and Fish, 1728
Oil on canvas
31 1/2 × 25 1/4 inches
"Well, I’m a fan of most of Chardin’s work. This painting however has a sense of balance and unbalance happening all at once. And that red of the fish interior is sexy.”
Dennis did not share his one of his own works as a personal favorite, so we chose this one entitled A Great Big Giant World which was part of the inaugural Cat Art Show in 2014.
VANESSA STOCKARD
Pierre Bonnard, Le Chat Blanc 1894
Oil on cardboard
20.4 x 13.2 inches
On display at Musée d’Orsay
“I’d seen reproductions of this painting for years before finally encountering it (Le Chat Blanc) in the flesh. What struck me immediately was how perfectly Bonnard captures that lanky, slightly feral cat attitude, the upright tail, the arched back, those tiny,delicate paws that look as if they’re barely touching the ground. It makes me laugh every time. I love the distortion: the squinted expression, the flattened ears, the petite rose-flushed nose and mouth. It’s exaggerated, of course, utterly absurd…but somehow, Bonnard pushes beyond logic and lands exactly where the magic is.
There are no clever tricks here. Just an honest, slightly ridiculous depiction of the cat’s contradictory nature, elegant and unstable at the same time, captured in a single painting.”
Vanessa Stockard, Alley Cat, 2013
Oil on canvas
”This is one of my earliest cat paintings…I painted it in 2013 after encountering one of the most thoroughly rotten cats I have ever seen. At the time I was on my honeymoon in a tiny medieval town in southern France. I spotted him, an utterly ungroomed dark lord of a cat. His expression was so foul and magnificent that I burst out laughing. I remember thinking, if Satan himself ever wandered the earth in feline form, this would absolutely be the bloke.
I don’t know where the painting is now, but I remember thinking at the time: I got it. It’s hanging on someone’s wall somewhere, quietly judging them.”
GARY BASEMAN
Two famous "psychotic" or kaleidoscopic cat drawings by Louis Wain were largely produced between 1914 and 1930 while he was in psychiatric institutions.
”Any of the wild and psychedelic cat art of Louis Wain! It’s too hard to pick one!”
Gary Baseman, The Ascension of Blackie, 2020
Acrylic on canvas
“The Ascension is my personal favorite cat painting because it was produced after losing my best friend of 15 years, Blackie. The sketch for the painting felt divinely created, since I woke up and drew it at 4am, exactly 24 hours in the exact spot of Blackie the Cat’s passing.”
NIKITA CHAN
Utagawa Kuniyoshi, Cats Suggested as the Fifty-three Stations of the Tōkaidō (c. 1847-1850)
Woodcut
14x30 inches
“I like Cats Suggested by the Fifty-three Stations of the Tōkaidō (1847) because it is playful and creative. The artist turns the shapes of landscapes and scenes into cats in a very clever way, so when you look closely you start discovering them hidden in the image. It feels fun and surprising, almost like a visual puzzle. I also love how it captures the personality of cats: curious, mysterious, and a little mischievous. The artwork is beautiful but also humorous, which makes it really enjoyable to look at again and again.
Nikita Chan, Late Night Through the Lily Field, 2025
Color pencil
“Late Night… is one of my favorite pieces I’ve created because it was inspired by several things I love. I was thinking about The Cat Returns by Miyazaki and the magical feeling of cats having their own secret world. I was also inspired by Sargent’s Carnation, Lily, Lily, Rose, especially the warm lantern light glowing in the evening garden. The lilies in the painting have a special meaning to me because lilies are actually dangerous for cats in the real world, but in this spiritual world I imagined, they become gentle spirits or little elves surrounding the cats. I wanted the scene to feel peaceful and magical, like the cats are on a quiet lantern walk through a sacred garden.
THE JEALOUS CURATOR (AKA DANIELLE KRYSA)
Emily Rae Counts, Natural Familiar, 2023
Glazed stoneware with gold luster, lighting
12.5 x 15.5 x 12.5 inches
“For my pick, I'm going with Emily Rae Counts. I absolutely love her ceramic cats that often glow hot pink from within. They are really strange and totally magical... kind of like real cats, actually.”
“And here's a work in progress photo of what's happening in my studio at the moment.”
(These works and others will be a part of Krysa’s next show in early 2027.)