Will Cotton

Found a really amazing still life artist.  It seemed somehow fitting to choose Will Cotton since Christmas is a week away and some of his paintings are images of gingerbread-like houses and candy arraignments.  His paintings transport the viewer into a fantasy word that is somehow very familiar.  It is someplace that as children we have all fantasized about.  They have written songs, fairy tales, and cartoons about worlds where landscapes and structures are made of edible sweets and chocolate flows languidly through river beds.  He even creates a "heaven" of pillowy wisps of cotton candy where perfect female nudes lounge with all the innocence of sexless angels (so, of course it's highly erotic).


Nut House, 2012, oil on linen,  82x96 inches




Alpine Ruin 2008 Oil on Linen 60 x 84



The Consummation of Empire 2008 Oil on Linen 84 x 56


Okay, enough with the gingerbread houses. Ya Will Cotton can paint a mean gingerbread house, we get it!  On to the nudes. Nothing seems to get more people riled up than the female nude.  And nothing pisses off a feminist more than an outrageously attractive and thin female nude. Will Cotton has both! Feast your eyes on the flesh...err I mean candy and ice cream.



 
Ice Cream Donna II, 2011


Fairy Floss 2010


Cotton Candy Clouds 2004


Cotton paints in a highly realistic style.  His paintings often look like photographs, which he works from often after he has created a mini landscape of treats and sweets. His paintings are large scale which also allows him to execute a high level of detail in his work with little to no impasto, or painterly style.  His subjects, especially his nudes are pretty interesting in that he does not try to hide the fact that he is simply creating a fantasy world where women (perfect, young, fertile women mind you) are perhaps the ultimate treat.  Each pink, saccharine nipple is the cherry on top if you will.  His work kinda reminds me of Jeff Koons' in some ways.  His recent dive into the pop music scene cements that thought.  He was the inspiration for Katy Perry's California Gurls album art.  And he has done several paintings of Katy dress in sugary costumes.

 I kinda like Cottons work though.  I find it pretty shallow, yes, but I don't like when critics dismiss someones skill or there art simply because it is shallow or void of intellectual depth, or assume that because they can paint realistically then the work must be devoid of meaning.  At some point Will is expressing something that is as much a part of being human as wallowing in the misery of intellectual consciousness, or lamenting over the trials of being a woman in "a man's world".  He's commenting on the fantasy, desire, appetite  He's unabashedly acknowledging that as humans (male or female) a very real, very primal part of us loves looking at soft skin, round breasts, perky nipples, bare legs, exposed abdomens, shoulders, chests buttocks, etc..  His work is about the ultimate human indulgence! just as pertinent in our society today as human consumption, human cruelty, human greed, and so on.  Now, I don't know if Cotton sees it that way, if not, then ya, his work is trite and obnoxious.