Gentle Giants

Gentle Giants explores the interplay between figuration and abstraction in Ally Cotton’s paintings. Through curving forms, warm tones, and luminous gradients, Cotton evokes the feminine body and dreamlike landscapes, creating images that feel both sumptuous and unsettling. About Smooth, curvilinear planes and warm tones suffuse Ally Cotton’s paintings in Gentle Giants, a solo presentation of works on view through December 12 at VillageOneArt. Provocative yet ambivalent, elements in Cotton’s works merge figuration with abstraction, implying the presence of the feminine body without overly emphasizing figuration in these compositions. Cotton creates sumptuous yet unsettling tableaux of imagery evincing an adroit approach to capturing light and line in her artistic practice. Curves and layers seem to hover, extending outward from the picture plane to entice the viewer to imagine these surrealistic visions as part of their inner world. The artist’s incredible brushwork seems to dissolve surfaces in order to create unified, undulating surfaces able to approximate dreamworlds, natural environments and even fast food. Among her many talents as a painter, the artist is able to create gradients in her compositions that seemingly defy gravity. Assimilating line into the three-dimensional depths of her paintings with aplomb, the artist is able to keenly invoke emotional impact. Adapting her use of gradient and color, and indicating a remarkable ability to apprehend linework’s influence on compositional impact, her work builds on the artistic dexterity of 20th century masters of color and line such as Marc Chagall and Henri Matisse. The artist is able to expertly apply her arts training toward today’s doomscroll aesthetics, presenting a subversive yet keenly contemporary lens in her practice that singularly defines it within the contemporary arts landscape. Her ability to transcend representational and abstract painting styles speaks to her skillful qualities as a painter and emerging contemporary artist working at the forefront of the New York City painting scene today. Read more Toggle Prints