Will Cotton

(American, born 1965)

Will Cotton 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.” Born in 1965 in Melrose, MA, he 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.