From cowboys taming unicorns to candy-colored worlds of sweetness, Rockefeller Center has been doused with a layer of fantastical surrealism this month, as multidisciplinary artist Will Cotton’s iconic imagery has taken over as part of the public art pop-up series Art in Focus.

“I hope that visitors will imagine themselves in a completely new environment, a place that feels at the same time familiar and totally foreign,” Cotton tells The Center Magazine of his works, which are spread across the campus, sandwiched in between doorways, sprawled across hallways, and brightening up windows displays with a sense of whimsy.

But here at Rockefeller Center, he had the unique opportunity to curate his own decades of paintings into site-specific installations that fit into the historic buildings’ nooks and crannies.

The most exciting was the 125-foot-long wall space on the Rink Level under 45 Rockefeller Plaza that granted him a unique blank slate. “I went back into my archives and repositioned works vis-à-vis each other in such a way that makes a non-linear narrative in a linear way,” he explains. “It now tells a story that is more than what just one painting could tell.”

As visitors stroll through the space, the relationship between two of his trademark characters, a unicorn and cowboy, morphs through various stages. “In American mythology, the cowboy goes in and takes what he wants. He tames the wild animal, and he shoots first and asks questions later,” Cotton says. “I imagine him coming across this unicorn, and he's really met his match. He tries to control the unicorn, but simply can not.”

In fact, this opportunity gave the artist himself the chance to view his existing works through a fresh perspective, admitting that when he pieced together the larger-than-life mural, ebbing and flowing through the complicated relationship between the figures, “My jaw dropped.”

Those paintings are interspersed with another of Cotton’s best-known motifs, that of confectionary wonderlands, including one painting with Valentine's Day lollipops called “Love Me.”

“I feel like it encapsulates the way I like to see people look at my work,” Cotton says. “When I made that painting, probably 20 years ago, I really wanted to get across this idea of how a sentiment can become a landscape.” In this particular case, he says it’s all about the desire to be loved becoming so all-encompassing. “If the viewer can give themselves over to this idea, then I feel like that's a way into looking at all of the art.”

“These are basically props that I'll use or that subjects wear in paintings, but they're not displayed ever as art,” he says, adding this was a “really fun opportunity to show those.”

If there’s an air of familiarity to his candy-inspired works, it’s because around 2010, he got a cold-call email from a “Katheryn Hudson,” who was interested in buying some of his paintings. His girlfriend clued him in that it might be Katy Perry, who had just released “I Kissed a Girl.” While Cotton doesn’t tend to work with celebrities, her pin-up girl style was right up his alley.

He took a chance and replied: “Is this by any chance Katy Perry? If so, the paintings are not available, but why don’t you come and pose for me?” It was indeed the budding popstar, and she took him up on his offer to pose for him. In fact, Perry loved their collaboration so much that she asked to use the imagery on her 2010 album cover for Teenage Dream.

“She and her team got super into the idea of this candyland that I'd been painting for almost 20 years at that time,” he remembers. Soon, he found himself in Los Angeles working on the California Gurls music video with Perry and Snoop Dogg. “My role in that whole production was to make sure all the sets looked like my paintings,” he says incredulously. “We literally used my paintings as backdrops, and I showed them how to make the props that I make, like a big gingerbread house.”

While the Hollywood ride was a thrill, the Massachusetts-born artist has long rooted himself in New York, where he’s long had an affinity for Rockefeller Center, which he’s found to be an understated art hub. Not only does he often visit Christie’s for auction previews, but he says he has core memories tied to Radio City Music Hall, both from seeing a Prince concert there in the 1990s (which he calls a “high point”), as well as getting artistic inspiration from the Rockettes.

On top of it, he’s especially inspired by Rockefeller Center’s public arts, especially the Works Progress Administration (WPA) murals and bas-relief sculptures, as well as Lee Lawrie and Rene Paul Chambellan’s Atlas sculpture.

“All these things represent such an iconic time in New York City and the architecture is wonderfully preserved,” he says. “Plus there’s a whole creative element here, with SNL and other shows being filmed here. Art is being made in addition to being shown.”

Cotton managed to achieve both with his month-long exhibit, which also included an art-making Art Sundae workshop on March 8, where he jokes he gave away some of his trade secrets by showing families how to create his trademark cake art props.

But more than anything, he’s just excited to get more people to appreciate the arts. “If someone comes in and takes in the big murals, they'll walk out with things looking different,” he says. “They might go to lunch and their dessert will look like a landscape. Art can really change the way you see the whole world.”

Will Cotton's artwork will be on view throughout the Rockefeller Center campus (at 30 Rockefeller Plaza, 10 Rockefeller Plaza, 50 Rockefeller Plaza, 45 Rockefeller Plaza’s vitrines, and elsewhere) through May 31, 2025. This installation is part of Art in Focus, a series of art exhibitions produced in partnership with Art Production Fund.