Interview with Will Cotton

copyright Otino Corsano 2007


WILL COTTON “NUT HOUSE” 2007, OIL ON LINEN, 36” X 40”

OC: I find hyperrealist painting involves a critical dilemma: imagery is either read literally as formal content or viewed allegorically as a symbolic free-for-all. Where do you locate your work in this spectrum between empirical stock and interpretive association?

WC: There's a lot of painting that would fit into that category (hyperrealist) for which the similarity to photography seems to be the whole point. In other words the way in which the painting is executed is more important than whatever imagery might be depicted. I see painting as story telling so for me the content is of primary importance and is served by the manner of execution. Over the last ten years I've moved more and more toward a very exact rendering of surface because the subject matter is better explained through that type of description. If for example I'm painting a landscape of glazed doughnuts that doesn't look absolutely shiny, sticky, sweet, translucent, and vast, I haven't told the story as completely as I could have. Of course once a painting leaves the studio it's fair game for anyone to interpret as they will.

OC: One example of the more literal criticism the work generates revolves around the basic categorization of the paintings as “food art”. Your inclusion in “The Food Show: The Hungry Art” at the Chelsea Art Museum (Nov. 16, 2006 – Feb. 24, 2007) is a sample of the works accommodation to this genre. Is the ongoing citation of Wayne Thiebaud as an influence justified?


WAYNE THIEBAUD, "CAKES", 1963, OIL ON CANVAS

WC: I'm always a little surprised by that association. Thiebaud's cake paintings are in the tradition of still life painting, mine are about landscape. I feel more of a kinship to the Hudson River School painters like Frederick Church and Albert Bierstadt who's work dealt with a kind of sublime natural splendor.


ALBERT BIERSTADT, “AMONG THE SIERRA NEVADA, CALIFORNIA” 1868, 72” x 120”

OC: Still, your work is often critically described using the language of food and confectionary. This mode of synesthetic interpretation can lead one to draw several reads: commercial gluttony as visual luxury, hyper-superficial sugar rush for the food-fetished wealthy, are just two that are top of mind. Are you concerned about the work languishing from either unappetizing analogies or similar candied, rococo reads?

WC: This type of critique doesn't actually refer to my work but to the perceived market for the work. It's frustrating to see how distracted some critics are by issues of commerce. The only audience I have in mind when I make a painting is comprised of myself and my peers, beyond that it's impossible for me to guess how anyone might read or consume my work.


WILL COTTON "ROOT BEER SWAMP" 2002, OIL ON LINEN, 48" x 60"

OC: The floating bubbles in the painting "Root Beer Swamp" 2002, appear as floating skulls while the bubbles themselves are traditionally interpreted to represent the brevity of human life. Are your paintings constructed as contemporary vanitas?

WC: The tradition of vanitas painting as well as memento mori has always interested me, but more in the classical sense than the medieval. If vanitas implies carpe diem then I'm all for it. For me the reminder of life's transience is absolutely life affirming


HARMEN STEENWIJCK, “VANITAS” c.1640, OIL ON PANEL, 37.7 x 38.2 cm

OC: Your process of constructing elaborate sets are the initial reference stage for the paintings has been well reported. As Matthew Barney is purported to create films to justify his sculpture production, are you creating paintings to support your previously unexhibited art of food installations?


WILL COTTON "MACROON GARDEN", 2005

WC: I like that the paintings become a record of something which existed temporarily, but has since melted or decayed into oblivion. If the maquettes I paint from were to survive themselves, I'm afraid it might ultimately diminish the impact of the paintings. This working method really speaks to how much of the art-making process happens in private. In many cases I've built an elaborate installation in my studio which will never be seen by anyone but myself. When I was an art student I spent some time making landscape paintings outdoors and found that I almost couldn't see what I'd done as long as it was in the context of the subject itself. It was only in returning home in the evening that the painting was able to take on a life of it's own.

OC: Many of the dark shadows sprawling over the dessert landscapes of earlier paintings give evidence of a looming human presence. Childhood tales like “Hansel and Gretel” are easily called to mind. Is it fair to say there are dark undercurrents to these works?


WILL COTTON "CREAMY DREAM" 2000, OIL ON LINEN, 60" x 72"

WC: A few of the words that bother me in the context of my work are fantasy and escapist, I think that's where the dark undercurrents come in. As much as I'm interested in depicting a kind of utopia/paradise it's only in considering the potentially distopian aspects of the scene that it begins to make sense to me.

OC: Are the distopian aspects of these scenes representational of addiction?

WC: I've been fascinated by the disparity between the imagined utopia and the attempt to bring that vision into existence. It's easy for me to see human history as a series of failed attempts to create a paradise on earth. Addiction plays into this in that something in life has become tragically out of balance, that there is a compulsion to pursue a kind of behavior that's ultimately destructive to the individual.


WILL COTTON “COTTON CANDY CLOUDS” 2006, OIL ON LINEN, 72” X 96”

OC: Do you feel any need to justify your representation of women in your paintings?

WC: In the end I'm not so much depicting women as I am depicting a specific depiction of women. In thinking about who might populate a landscape of pure saccharine sweetness it was American mid twentieth century pin-up painting that came to mind. Not so much real womanhood as an exaggerated signifier of femininity.

OC: What statement do you hope is inferred by intersecting the stylized tropes of calendar girls and Dutch treats?

WC: It's important that me that in image making I'm putting forth more questions than answers. That's to say that there is no statement. I get very bored with art when I feel I'm being told something or taught a lesson. I'd prefer that my paintings to have enough potency to provoke a discussion, but a discussion with no specific intended outcome.


WILL COTTON “CANDY STICK FOREST” 2005, OIL ON LINEN, 60” X 72”

OC: The more recent paintings involving models appears akin to aesthetics from fashion and advertising. What are your intentions for choreographing this look of consumerist desire in painterly realism? Are these paintings linked to the commercial context of the Chelsea gallery circuit?

WC: The statistics vary but it seems the average American is exposed to around 3000 advertising messages per day which means this has effectively become our environment. Advertising imagery is the new landscape, and these images exist to create desire within us. So it feels natural for me to reference the aesthetics of advertising when I'm painting about desire. Oddly the Chelsea gallery circuit strikes me as a completely different kind of consumerist paradigm and not one I understand well enough to comment on.


WILL COTTON "PRETTY" 2004, OIL ON LINEN, 60" x 80"

OC: The resurgence of hyper-realism as a popular genre in the contemporary art arena appears to have drawn polar responses. To some a comprehensive mastery of oil painting inherently carries the stigma of bravado, academicism or worse, meticulous frivolity. The surfacing of issues of connoisseurship can also be viewed as equally problematic. To others, the potency of the laborious process as a romantic human cost naturally fuses the artistic intentionality with a signature intensity. What drives your motivation to paint women in dessert landscapes with such visual accuracy? Is it the same desire represented in the work?

WC: This is actually a very unnatural way for me to paint, as you pointed out it's laborious and in fact very difficult. The migration in my work toward this type of representation happened as a direct result of my desire to tell the story completely.

- Otino Corsano & Will Cotton, April 2007

www.willcotton.com

The Persistence of Abstract Painting in Toronto

The following text is an excerpt from an unpublished article, the full title: "Dead Metaphor: The Persistence of Abstract Painting in Toronto" written in May 2007

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Can the American abstract template be reborn as an autonomous Canadian model?

Can the Canadian dream to see the global economy and discourse of abstraction shift to become centered in Toronto come true?

A micro sampling of emergent trends in the work of three Toronto abstract artists and one New York abstract artist may offer a litmus test for the arrival of such a shift. Starting with an introduction of a new wave of Toronto abstractionists: Tasha Aulls, William Griffiths, and Meghan McKnight are each represented in Toronto by P|M Gallery. The gallery is uniquely situated in the east end of the city setting it geographically apart from established west end galleries specializing in Canadian abstract art. All three artists employ abstraction for individual purpose.

Tasha Aulls work basks in that ambiguous zone of abstract semiotic bliss. Refusing to latch onto either microcosmic or macrocosmic references wholeheartedly, Aulls’ paintings act as tactile emotions, shifting like the weather. Aware of abstract paradigms, Aulls’ theoretical strategy is to ignore history outright. This is both an unexpected option and a bold slippage. By refusing to associate her work with the tenets of any past practice or hero, the work is allowed new breathing space to form and develop. While the general aesthetic is clearly recognizable as optimistic free form, the detailed incising scars the purity of the template.


Tasha Aulls "Untitled", 2007, Oil on Mylar, 21" x 24"

Like most abstract artists, Tasha Aulls wants to have her cake and to eat it too– to visually capture a freedom of painterly expression looks all too familiar as the textbook standards. What is most moving is her sincerity of approach. Aulls paints as if to have us believe these magic tricks are being performed for the first time. Her imagery feeds into our longing for a synergistic meld of autonomous liberty and applied paint. As it happens, Aulls is off to Europe in the Fall for graduate studies at the prestigious Goldsmiths College. It will be interesting to witness how European influences affect her personal abstract approaches and aesthetic.


William Griffiths "Untitled II", 2006, Acrylic on Board, 24" x 24"

William Griffiths’ work appears as abstract photography returning to the material of paint. Employing a similarly carefree laissez-faire attitude to painting precedents, Griffiths’ approach to abstraction is a corporeal, empirical fascination with the way paint and surface has the infinite ability to create illusory three-dimensional space– the oldest trick in the book. Yet again, the oldest is reborn as the newest and these paintings celebrate this perpetual marketing cycle of the unreal. High saturation reads as illustrations of reproduced relics, which, in and of itself, makes for the best paint about paint storyline coming home again.


Meghan McKnight "Tetsu Drosera", 2006, Acrylic on Canvas, 10" x 10"

The organic paintings of Meghan McKnight are more difficult to locate in past painting sources. They appear as botanical and biological classification paintings shifting from the realm of realism into sculptural relief work. It is as if McKnight’s mission is to locate new species of abstract paintings; however, this ironic read is only my recommendation. McKnight too is sincere in her application of abstraction to elicit subtle responses in the viewer– again an appreciation of the intricacies of nature and the delicate factors that transform living forms. Here we truly find a new growth of the abstract.


Joshua Abelow "Narcissism (Black & Pink)", 2006, Oil and Acrylic on Linen, 84" x 48"


The New York abstractionist is Joshua Abelow. Once the assistant for Ross Bleckner–Abelow’s apprenticeship with the undisputed champion of revitalized contemporary abstraction makes him a contender as formidable as his mentor. Abelow’s work is only lightweight in its reductionist tendencies. Ironically, his first solo exhibition was at P|M Gallery in Toronto and he is completing graduate studies at Cranbrook Academy of Art where Charles Pachter studied– this is where any Canadian connections end. Abelow’s early work celebrated graphic line with the subtle brushwork only visible in the original works– similar to Lichtenstien’s and Modrian’s surprising painterliness. Throughout his early career, Abelow steadily progressed a personal narrative as his graphic code. As his paintings became more esoteric his subject matter became more subjective with the culmination of this story now in its climatic chapters– large self-portraits and the formal investigation of narcissism as painting itself. This is American abstraction at its best. It is about nothing but a pure version of itself. The work draws from every East Coast great with no inhibition because it is proudly authentic. This will always be the New York edge.