Will Cotton
Born 1965 in Melrose, Massachusetts
Lives and works in New York City

Will Cotton employs two of the most time-honored traditions in painting, landscape and still-life, to create confectionary fantasies which evoke a happy desire of abundance, security, and childhood dreams. Creating elaborate scenes out of gingerbread, icing, candy canes, gum drops, and other sweets, Cotton theatrically lights the model, photographs it, and makes a painting from the photo. The process gives his works a fairytale quality, quite different from a straightforward landscape or a still life of sweets. The artist has said: &lquo;Like the land of Cockaigne (mythical medieval land of plenty), candy land is an imagined utopia whose exact geographical location is elusive. It is the idea of a land of plenty where all is pleasure.&rquo;

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