Artist of the day: Artist of the day, December 25: Will Cotton, contemporary American painter

Monday, December 25, 2017

Artist of the day, December 25: Will Cotton, contemporary American painter

Will Cotton (1965) is a contemporary American painter known for his Photo-Realist sensual depictions of women immersed in landscapes of sugary confections. His paintings are inspired by a variety of subjects including the children’s board game Candy Land, the pin-up posters of George Petty, the landscape paintings of Frederic Edwin Church, and the academically painted nudes of William Adolphe Bouguereau. “I’ve become very interested in the way that most cultures all over the world seem to engage in some process of self-adornment,” Cotton has said of his work. “I imagine that the only materials the figure in the painting has at hand to decorate or clothe themselves with are made of sweets.”

Cotton studied painting at both Cooper Union and the Academy of Art in New York. The artist has had numerous solo exhibitions with Mary Boone Gallery, and his works are in the collections of the Seattle Museum of Art and the Columbus Museum of Art. In 2010, he notably served as the artistic director for Katy Perry’s music video “California Gurls,” and has painted several portraits of the singer. Cotton lives and works in New York, NY.

In the kitchen, which faces a studio space, he produces a copy of Martha Stewart’s Baking Handbook and opens it to a yellow butter cake recipe he’s been eyeing; he then flips to a brown sugar buttercream frosting. “I love Martha,” he tells as he scans the list of ingredients. “Her recipes are the best.” The affection is mutual: Cotton was commissioned to paint the legendary businesswoman’s portrait in 2015 for the cover of the 25th anniversary edition of her magazine.

The artist has also been known to host annual bake-offs at his home, where friends, including artists and amateur bakers, present their finest baked goods. Cotton always judges alongside a guest; one year, Stewart held the position. This year it was art critic Andrew Russeth. As he lines two round cake pans with parchment, butter, and flour, he describes a timely cake from this year’s contest, which was shaped like a rock, with “Resist” scrawled graffiti-style in icing. “That took the prize this year—and it was very tasty.”

He disappears into a nearby closet, which is filled to the brim with equal parts art and baking supplies, and procures a large KitchenAid mixer. As we measure and sift together the dry ingredients, Cotton explains that he began baking in earnest in the mid-’90s, around the time that he started painting cakes. Keen to create paintings of tall, whimsical stacks of cakes, he’d bought out two bakeries. The experience, both expensive and messy, spurred him to perfect his own baking skills. Though he’s taken a few classes at the Institute of Culinary Education (ICE) since then.

© 2017. All images copyright of artist Will Cotton.