Interests: Fashion, makeup, religious imagery, death, death, death, anonymity, pathology, mustelidae, deep ecology, Carl Jung, Philip K. Dick, George Orwell, pop culture, mental illness, art, blood, strong women, weak men, betrayal, science fiction, viral microbiology, American coldwave, subculture
"...the joyful, keen and fearless otter; mild and loving to his own kind, and gentle with his neighbour of the stream; full of play and gladness in his life, full of courage in his stress; ideal in his home, steadfast in death; the noblest little soul that ever went four-footed through the woods." --Ernest Thompson Seton
In his latest series “Cookies of War,” artist Phil Hansen recreates Goya’s Disasters of War etchings as a sugar cookie. Using sugar cookie dough as one color, then adding cocoa to make another, these pieces slowly came together with just these simple ingredients.
After studying Goya’s etchings, Hansen drew small sections of selected etchings. Bits of cookie dough were delicately placed onto a baking sheet; slowly the pictures came together. After baking each creation, it became clear that these aren’t your Starbucks Halloween sugar cookies.
“I wondered if I could take something that is hard to look at and make it playfully palatable.”
Hansen has been long fascinated by Goya’s depictions of war for their brutal honesty which conflicts with our society’s view of war that mostly emphasizes patriotism and heroism. The “war” that we know often highlights moments of beauty and humanity, concealing the grotesque actuality.
