The daughter of painters Wolf Kahn and Emily Mason, and granddaughter of painter Alice Trumbull Mason, Cecily Kahn was destined to become an artist. A native New Yorker who has lived in New York City most of her life, Kahn lives and works in a large top floor loft on Canal street and Broadway, overlooking one of the busiest intersections in Manhattan. Her paintings reflect both the angularity of the city as well as the organic chaos of city life. "I spent years making paintings of buildings, roof tops, and finally maps of the city. I began to play with the map image, layering one on top of the other thus creating new forms. Eventually, these map paintings shed their representational base and became more internal, psychological maps."