“In the mind of an addict, there’s never enough cake.”
Fleshed-out fantasies
In medieval folklore, Cockaigne is a mythical land with rivers of wine, houses made of cake, eternal youth, and endless sex. Will Cotton’s multidisciplinary practice reimagines this vision of hedonistic excess for the modern cultural landscape – “a candy land that feeds an insatiable appetite.” Taking cues from rococo artists like Fragonard and Boucher, his oil-painted fantasies are rendered in exquisite detail. The cotton-candy clouds and languorous bodies are finished so smoothly that, at first glance, they look super-realistic. This illusion of perfection is undercut by a feeling of unease...
Bio
Will Cotton (he/him) was born in 1965 in Massachusetts, USA. He has lived and worked in New York City since the 1980s.
Pop Culture
Will’s practice extends beyond painting and sculpture, to performance and creative direction. He made his mark on popular culture as artistic director of Katy Perry’s ‘California Gurls’ music video. He also painted the iconic cover of her album Teenage Dream (Cotton Candy Katy, 2010), as well as the Martha Stewart Living 25th Anniversary Issue cover.
Process
Will handmakes costumes and props to help bring his otherworldly compositions to life – “it’s important to me to capture the correct light and relationship between all the elements in order to make a detailed sketch, prior to the paint ever touching the canvas.”
