Every city has a rhythm. Paris waltzes. Venice drifts. But New York — New York charges forward. When Sergei Moskalev turned his brush toward Manhattan, he wasn’t interested in painting a skyline. He wanted to paint a pulse.
The My Love Letter to New York collection is a series of 8 original paintings that capture the city’s raw energy through the same techniques Moskalev honed across his Paris, Venice, and Las Vegas collections — but here, something different emerges. The palette is bolder. The brushstrokes are faster. The compositions practically vibrate.
The Brooklyn Bridge as Poetry
Two of the collection’s most striking works center on New York’s bridges. In My Love Letter to New York 001, the Brooklyn Bridge stretches across a wide panoramic canvas in warm oranges and fiery reds, with the city glowing behind it. The bridge is more than infrastructure — it becomes a symbol of connection, ambition, and the way light transforms steel into something almost organic.
Where 001 captures the bridge in daylight warmth, My Love Letter to New York 003 takes a vertical perspective, placing the bridge towers against a bright blue sky with deep crimson and amber glowing through the structure. The shift from horizontal panorama to vertical portrait changes everything — suddenly the bridge rises rather than spans, and the city behind it reaches upward with it.
Street Level: The Canyon Effect
Not all of Moskalev’s New York paintings observe from a distance. My Love Letter to New York 004 drops the viewer into the urban canyon — a street-level view looking through towering buildings where reds, blues, and yellows collide in explosive brushwork. Golden light streaks along the street, suggesting taxis, movement, the unstoppable forward momentum of Manhattan life.
“New York has a presence that feels both powerful and deeply human,” Moskalev says. “Its skyline rises with confidence, yet within it are countless quiet moments — light slipping between buildings, movement unfolding at every corner.”
From Dusk to Dawn
The collection tells a story of time passing over the city. The nocturnal My Love Letter to New York 007 offers an aerial view of the city grid at night, with a golden avenue cutting through the center and One World Trade Center visible on the horizon. The painting crackles with the electric energy of a city that simply changes rhythm when the sun goes down.
Then comes sunrise. My Love Letter to New York 008 bathes the skyline in pinks, corals, and golden yellows — the warmest palette in the entire collection. The Empire State Building emerges through soft light, and the city feels quieter, almost reflective. It is the most hopeful painting in the series, and arguably one of Moskalev’s most luminous works across all his collections.
Technique: Speed and Confidence
Moskalev’s classical training at the Penza Art College and membership in the UNESCO International Federation of Artists ground his work in discipline, but the New York series shows him at his most spontaneous. The palette knife work is bolder here, the impasto thicker, the compositions more dynamic. These are paintings made with the confidence of an artist who has spent decades mastering light — and a city that demanded he work faster to keep up.
The complete My Love Letter to New York collection is available through Basha Art Gallery with worldwide shipping. To inquire about a specific piece, contact us directly.
