Cotton's works from the 1990s depicted pop icons sourced from contemporary advertisements such as the Nestlé Quick bunny - directly referencing visual modes aimed at evoking desire.
Cotton described his early works in a 2008 interview, saying "My initial impulse to make these paintings really came out of an awareness of the commercial consumer landscape that we live in.
He creates elaborate maquettes of these settings from real baked goods made in his Manhattan studio as a visual source for the final works.
[1] Cotton’s work also builds upon and updates the idea of land of milk and honey in European literature and art.
Cotton states “The dream of paradise, of a land of plenty, is a thread that runs through all of human history, not just in the affluent times but in fact very often in the lean as well.”[3] He has also been inspired by painters Frederic Edwin Church, François Boucher and Fragonard, the photographer Carleton Watkins, as well as pin-up painters such as Gil Elvgren.
[4][5] He is currently represented by Galerie Templon, Paris, Brussels, and New York and Baldwin Gallery, Aspen, Colorado.