Will Cotton (born 1965 in Melrose, Massachusetts,
U.S.) is an American painter. His work primarily features landscapes
composed of sweets, often inhabited by human subjects. Will Cotton lives
and works in New York City.
Cotton's works from the 1990s depicted pop icons sourced from contemporary advertisements such as the Nestlé
Quick bunny - directly referencing visual modes aimed at evoking
desire. Cotton described his early works in a 2008 interview, saying "My
initial impulse to make these paintings really came out of an awareness
of the commercial consumer landscape that we live in. Every day we're
bombarded with hundreds, if not thousands of messages designed
specifically to incite desire within us."
In 1996, Cotton began to develop an iconography
in which the landscape itself became an object of desire. The paintings
often feature scenery made up entirely of pastries, candy and melting
ice cream. He creates elaborate maquettes
of these settings from real baked goods made in his Manhattan studio as
a visual source for the final works. Since about 2002, nude or nearly
nude pinup-style
models have occasionally populated these candy-land scenes. As in the
past, the works project a tactile indulgence in fanciful glut .
The female characters are icons of indulgence and languor, reflecting
the feel of the landscape itself. "These paintings are all about a very
specific place," says Cotton, "It's a utopia where all desire is
fulfilled all the time, meaning ultimately that there can be no desire,
as there is no desire without lack."
