Hero of an archival pigment print hybrid by Will Cotton

Will Cotton

The Cowgirl

€850
Limited edition of 20077.0 (H) × 53.7 (W) cm

Sold out


Love this work?

Subscribe to get notified about any cancellations and early access on next releases.

The Cowgirl takes us on a ride across vanilla ice cream shores. 

In Will Cotton’s candyland, desire and excess reign supreme. Our first print collaboration, The Cowgirl, is taken from a series of oil paintings that introduced a new cast of characters to the landscape. The titular cowgirl looks like a 50s pin-up star with her bedazzled costume, Old Hollywood waves, and million-dollar smile. She finds natural kinship with the elusive unicorn – both are "untamable, all-powerful creatures, desired by all."

Will’s impossible fantasies are rendered in realistic detail – like the muscle definition of the mythical creature in full gallop. His balance of traditional painting techniques and post-modern garishness is faithfully recreated using archival pigments. In line with the ‘more is more’ logic of Will’s land of desire, the print is finished with two silkscreen glitter layers on the cowgirl’s pistol and candy heart.

The cowgirl is fully at home and in her candyland habitat. Armed with a gun and candy heart bludgeon she answers to no one, nor any system of subjugating moral code imposed upon her.

Will Cotton
Will cotton portrait standing before original paintings
Will Cotton 1 collaborationIn 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. In reality, the nausea from all the sugar and the vertigo from the lack of solid ground would make this paradise inhospitable. For Will, this is the paradox of fantasy – “living in one’s own utopia can quickly become a dystopian nightmare.”

Who else should know about this work?

Help us spread the word


Reviews from Avant collectors

  • The packaging and care for the artwork was incredible. Thank You!

  • the item was some of the most professional packing i have seen outside of a museum. exceptionally well packed

  • communication from start to finish has been very informative, quick and helpful. I am happy with the professional way in which the piece has been packaged and shipped, protected to a high degree. Thank you to everyone involved.

  • appart from a incredible opportunity to own and enjoy an Ai Weiwei the packaging was exemplary. i have worked pretty much my whole life in the art and museum sector and this impressed me very much, well sone you guys 👍🏻

  • Very impressed with the quality - exceeded expectation. Thanks

  • outstanding paper quality and excellent packaging. love it.

  • I love it! beautifully framed.Thanks

  • The artwork is amazing, the quality of the printing is sublime, I am totally amazed, Thank you


Discover more print editions on Avant Arte

Poetic fragments
Available
Chen Wei TingPoetic fragments€1,200
Ourselves Scattered Parts Of Earth
Available
Caleb Hahne QuintanaOurselves Scattered Parts Of Earth€800
(Un)confined
Upcoming
William Mapan(Un)confined€650
Serac
Upcoming
Matt DeslauriersSerac€650