Biography

Ally Cotton is a New York based painter originally from Austin, Texas. Her work explores the space between figuration and abstraction through surreal, cartoon-like woman-creatures that are both endearing and unsettling. Rooted in visual excess, softness, and distortion, these paintings reflect personal experiences of desire, shame, and physical failure.

Each piece begins with a sculpted clay maquette, allowing her to bypass anatomical logic in favor of intuition and sensation. These fleshy, exaggerated forms function as avatars—distant enough from the human body to become metaphors, yet intimate enough to evoke sympathy and discomfort.

Their inflated, rounded shapes act as a kind of soft armor—protective, absurd, and emotionally charged. Titles like Hooters, Whitewater, and Venus reference kitsch, eroticism, and mythology, pointing to the ways bodies are consumed and performed. Ultimately, my work asks how softness—both formal and emotional—can be a radical, subversive force.