Will Cotton

Interested in cultural iconography, Will Cotton's art makes use of the common language of consumer culture shared across geographical boundaries. He considers the visual threads in his work, drawn from imagery ranging from the Candy Land board game and gingerbread houses to pinup art and cotton candy, to be part of the popular culture lexicon.[2] Cotton’s work also builds upon and updates the idea of land of milk and honey in European literature and art. Cotton states “The dream of paradise, of a land of plenty, is a thread that runs through all of human history, not just in the affluent times but in fact very often in the lean as well.”[4] He has also been inspired by painters Frederic Edwin Church, François Boucher, and Fragonard, the photographer Carleton Watkins, as well as pin-up painters such as Gil Elvgren.

Of his landscape painting influences, Cotton says, "I was initially drawn to the Hudson River School when I learned that many of the paintings were made specifically to incite a feeling of awe and a desire to experience the new frontier. This struck me as a particularly American kind of propagandist message that I wanted to reference in my paintings. I love the idea of showing ... what it might be like to experience such a place." 

Will Cotton (born 1965 in Melrose, Massachusetts, U.S.) lives and works in New York. The artist belongs to the generation of American painters who have taken the language of figurative style painting in a totally new direction. He works in his studio building giant confectionary-based assemblages, such as gingerbread houses, sweets, cake mountains and chocolate seas, opening the door to the creation of a new reality. Cotton sees his works as utopias that explore the notions of temptation and excess

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