Much of Australian artist Jenny Watson’s practice centres on her interior life, which she explores through a range of personal symbols and materials that evoke past experiences. In Sleeping in New York, she depicts herself asleep in a city renowned as an artistic epicentre. Hovering in a cobalt sky, the city appears as something of a mirage, alluding to the largely unattainable goal of securing gallery representation there. Made just after Watson had signed with the Italian-born gallerist Annina Nosei, the painting shows the artist sleeping peacefully, as she explains:

. . . in the knowledge that I had a gallery in New York that would show my work . . . I’m in a little illuminated spot in the middle of Manhattan on my comfortable bed, while the rest of Manhattan around me is like a great big insect with its piers and twin towers and dark sea.