Molasses+Swamp+II

Date: 1999
 * [[image:https://s3.amazonaws.com/saam.media/files/styles/x_large/s3/images/2013/2013.72.2_1a.jpg?itok=G3n4GdCX width="365" height="275" link="@https://americanart.si.edu/artwork/molasses-swamp-ii-86643"]] || Title: **Molasses Swamp II**

 Artist: **Will Cotton** Born: Melrose, Massachusetts 1965

Medium: oil on linen Dimensions: 36 x 48 in. (91.4 x 121.9 cm) Smithsonian American Art Museum Gift of the James F. Dicke Family© 1999, Will Cotton

Accession: 2013.72.2 || New York based painter Will Cotton has been cooking up confectionary landscapes and pin-up-inspired portraits for nearly twenty years. Cotton has built an artistic career on our collective penchant for sweets. His early work featured depictions of childhood advertising icons like the Nestle Quik Bunny and the Pillsbury Doughboy, which represent youthful indulgence and innocent pleasures. In the mid-1990s, Cotton rediscovered the board game Candy Land and began painting landscapes inspired by his childhood desire to physically inhabit the fictional world of gingerbread houses and peppermint stick forests. Bearing playful titles like //Devil’s Fudge Falls// (1999), //Custard Cascade// (2000-2001), //Spumoni River// (2003), and //Ice Cream Icebergs// (2004), Cotton’s paintings appeal to the child in all of us. But they are as much about adult desire, indulgence and the implications of excess as they are innocent pleasure.
 * About the work: **

In //Molasses Swamp II//, carmel “cottontails” protrude from a bubbling swamp, while Oreos, Mallomars and peanut butter cups form a rocky perimeter. One can almost smell the aroma of chocolate and molten molasses wafting from the scene. Cotton elicits this visceral response by making his sweets look as realistic as possible. He achieves this realism by constructing elaborate maquettes from cookies, cakes, cotton candy and all manner of sticky sweets. He then photographs the tabletop-sized models and translates the images onto canvas. Cotton is not only a talented painter, but also an accomplished pastry chef who bakes many of the sweets that are featured in his work.

Will Cotton has displayed his sugary landscapes in museums and galleries around the world. Recent venues include the Mary Boone Gallery in New York; the Baldwin Gallery in Aspen, Colorado; Pace Prints Chelsea, New York; the Michael Kohn Gallery in Los Angeles; and Galerie Daniel Templon in Paris, France. In 2010, Cotton collaborated with singer/performer Katy Perry for her music video California Gurls.

 
 * Resources: **

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 110%;">[|SAAM Collections Page] <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 110%;">Will Cotton
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