Cat Lee is a San Francisco-based oil painter whose work explores identity, memory, place, and the quiet significance of everyday things. She paints familiar objects, landscapes, and cultural artifacts, looking for the stories they carry about where we come from, how we belong, and the places we call home. Her family’s roots in San Francisco’s Chinatown inform one strand of this work, alongside a growing interest in the objects and traditions that shape California’s cultural identity.

Lee began painting in 2024 after more than twenty years building and scaling technology companies. Oil paint pulled her out of her planning brain and into the present moment. She started noticing things she’d walked past for years. The way light moved across a takeout box. The colors of a mahjong tile. The fog settling around Sutro Tower.

Working primarily in oil, Lee is drawn to subtle shifts in color, light, and form. Her subjects range from fortune cookies and flowers to familiar San Francisco landmarks and everyday objects. She is interested in what these ordinary things can reveal about cultural memory, personal history, and place, and in the stories already embedded in the things we pass every day.

Lee lives and paints in San Francisco, grateful for a practice that keeps the world feeling new.