Cookie Landscapes Painting Process

Painting the new Cookie Landscapes series is a complicated affair. First, they are trompe l'oeil-style pieces, meaning they are flat paintings that merely convey an illusion of three-dimensionality. That requires a slightly different and more intense painting approach than some of my other work because the illusion has to be convincing. That means paying extra close attention to light, shadows and details, because falling short in any area can make the illusion fall flat. 

Second, there a big extra factor in making the cookie paintings: creating the cookie model. 

While it's true that I always work from my own references, in this case, it's more than just scooping out a pretty ice cream cone and taking hundreds of photos of it. For the cookie paintings, I design complex cookie models and take days to bake and decorate them, just to use them as a reference for the trompe l'oeil-style paintings I'm making. The cookie models all have various narrative meanings, with me often pulling from past or present life experiences or simply optimistic daydreams. In short, I work very hard to design pieces that appeal to a light-hearted desire for magic, wonder and nostalgia. 

In fact, as I write this, my freezer is full of past cookie projects, and I have a gigantic three-foot gingerbread model sitting on my table for an even larger painting. It's a lot of work, and in the end, when I no longer need the reference, I destroy it. So why do I do it? 

Recently, I've had a few videos of my cookie paintings go viral on my TikTok, getting hundreds of thousands of views. In the age of AI, and with the volume of people seeing the work now, I've had a number of people suspect AI involvement, and so I've been making extra efforts to show how I develop my cookie models first. I've also had some people comment, well who cares if you did use AI (even if you didn't), because the final painting is all that matters.

It's an interesting point, and the only thing I can respond is, well, it matters to me. When I build my models from scratch, I intimately know everything about them. I can control all aspects of the design, including some of my cookie decorating faux pas. I think that ultimately makes the painting have much more creator passion and depth (both philosophically and in appearance) than if I were to have simply copied an AI-generated image. I suppose it's sort of like portrait painters, many of whom prefer to get to know their subjects before or as they paint them, to imbue the paintings with the personalities of their subjects.

Ultimately, I want the entire piece to be human-created thing, in every aspect, and I want to know my subject well enough to convey something with more meaning than simply a pretty picture.

Please feel free to check out my many TikTok videos to learn more about my painting process for this series. I'll also be posting more to my Instagram. I hope you'll stick with me on this journey as I continue to create what one person called "double the art," because I am really hoping it will bring some much-need joy to the world right now.