{"id":20379,"date":"2026-01-19T15:53:26","date_gmt":"2026-01-19T15:53:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/nationalgunowner.org\/index.php\/2026\/01\/19\/how-a-kansas-city-mermaid-became-will-cottons-muse\/"},"modified":"2026-01-19T15:53:28","modified_gmt":"2026-01-19T15:53:28","slug":"how-a-kansas-city-mermaid-became-will-cottons-muse","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nationalgunowner.org\/index.php\/2026\/01\/19\/how-a-kansas-city-mermaid-became-will-cottons-muse\/","title":{"rendered":"How a Kansas City Mermaid Became Will Cotton\u2019s Muse"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Will Cotton, The Siren\u2019s Offer<\/em>, 2024. Oil on canvas, 137 \u00d7 198 cm. Photo: Tanguy Beurdeley, Courtesy of the artist and Templon, Paris – Brussels – New York. Photo \u00a9 Artist’s studio<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Most people don\u2019t think of Kansas City, Missouri, as a hotbed of mythologizing. But the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art is currently showing \u201cRaven Halfmoon<\/a>: Ride or Die,\u201d which showcases new commissions from the Caddo Nation sculptor known for forcing Indigenous women into the foreground of American history, their ceramic visages glazed in shades of tar, smoke and blood. There, she elevates cowgirls over cowboys as protective totems lording over the prairie. This past August, living legends Patrick Mahomes<\/a> and Travis Kelce<\/a> of the Kansas City Chiefs, the latter a tragic hero who succumbed to a siren\u2019s call, opened the steakhouse 1587 Prime, an altar to their past triumphs and obscene display of surreal gluttony, where their faithful can dine on $345 Tomahawks flamb\u00e9ed tableside in a bouquet of herbs, marrow butter and brandy (for an additional $27) like Dido at Carthage. And it\u2019s here that neo-Rococo portraitist Will Cotton<\/a> found a muse for his latest series of large-scale paintings, \u201cBetween Instinct and Reason\u201d\u2014a celebration of the mermaid.<\/p>\n

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The artist describes the mermaid as the \u201cstrongest female character, unimpacted by moral standards and unthreatened by external forces,\u201d a sharp contrast to the daily struggle of Robin Rubash<\/a>, a trans model and OnlyFans<\/a> camgirl, who until recently was making ends meet while working from her childhood bedroom.<\/p>\n

In The Siren\u2019s Offer<\/i> (2024), which sold at Galerie Templon in New York this past summer<\/a>, Rubash\u2019s upturned head and torso serve as the figurehead of a ship arriving at a placid western shore, her upturned tail\u2014a sail\u2014fanning out in the glacial ice blue, white and pink of the transgender flag. She greets the archetype of macho and gay American myth, a faceless Marlboro Man in denim and leather chaps. She offers him a pink frosted cupcake, a signature Cotton confection. He approaches, accepting, but there\u2019s still a gap to bridge between traditional and gay America, and how the trans community will find its feet in that land is something that plays out in Rubash\u2019s everyday life.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe cowboy is every kind of American frontier myth: the rugged individual, the hero, the outlaw, the person who believes the land is theirs to conquer; the mermaid, on the other hand, belongs to a different mythology; she comes from a realm of fluid identities, shifting bodies and contradictions\u2014alluring and dangerous,\u201d Cotton tells Observer. \u201cI don\u2019t paint with specific political messaging in mind, but I\u2019m always trying to place figures at the edge of something.\u201d<\/p>\n

Rubash lives on the edge in Kansas City. She worked on the street before starting an OnlyFans five years ago under her parents\u2019 roof. \u201cBut I had to get out of there; they found out how much money I was making and would take it from me, and taxes took the rest, but what I have is enough to make a life in Kansas City,\u201d she says. \u201cAnd here I\u2019m respected for what I do.\u201d<\/p>\n

Here is where she found a rich and welcoming community in the local scene of fellow art school dropouts like the artist Peregrine Honig<\/a>, whose work focuses on social anxiety and sexual vulnerability. Rubash served as an early muse to Honig, who became her conduit to Cotton. \u201cI was immediately drawn to Robin\u2019s femininity; it\u2019s so painterly,\u201d Honig says. \u201cWe became friends very quickly talking about vulnerability and art history, and the history of great artists painting young women in the sex industry. Robin\u2019s like a nymph, and she has this pubescent beauty, but she\u2019s an adult, a grown person who\u2019s also nubile, and in painting her you\u2019re not doing damage to her, she\u2019s sentient\u2014hyper aware\u2014of how she wants to be perceived.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Robin Rubash, posed in Powell Gardens for Peregrine Honig\u2019s Ophrys<\/em> (2021). Courtesy the artist<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Their friendship led to Rubash\u2019s participation in Honig\u2019s Ophrys<\/i> (2021)<\/a>, a recreation of Edouard Manet\u2019s Olympia<\/i> (1862) with Rubash in the title role. Honig curated a tableau in which Rubash reclined nude among the orchids in Powell Gardens, as invited artists captured the moment between first light and the botanical gardens\u2019 opening hours that morning. Rubash still needed some convincing to pose in front of Cotton, but Honig knew from her own past experience that some people just need an extra push. \u201cThis is all a continuum,\u201d Honig explains.<\/p>\n

It was a life-drawing class decades earlier that changed the course of Honig\u2019s life and ultimately brought her to Kansas City. As a wayward teenager in San Francisco, Honig found a mentor in the late sculptor Ruth Asawa<\/a> (whose retrospective at MoMA runs through February 7). Asawa wrote Honig\u2019s letter of recommendation for the Kansas City Art Institute after being impressed by her early drawings, \u201cbut she also kicked my ass,\u201d Honig recalls. \u201cWhen I was 14 or 15, Ruth would take me off-campus to life drawing classes, from the model, like naked, no parental permission, in a room full of adults. I remember I was drawing, fixated on one part of the hand, and she told me \u2018You\u2019re not going to come back here if you\u2019re going to do neurotic little drawings, you need to draw the whole figure.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Honig stepped up and soon received a scholarship to the Kansas City Art Institute, where she was impressed by the pedigree of professors like Jim Leedy and Ken and Russell Ferguson, as well as the school\u2019s intense foundation program. At the same time, Kansas City offered cheap studio space, while greater Jackson County remains one of the wealthiest enclaves in the Midwest and is home to some of the country\u2019s top private collectors.<\/p>\n

So Honig stayed put. She briefly ran a gallery here, and eight years ago started a semi-regular drawing workshop, Bubbles & Bodies, at a local champagne bar. \u201cWill asked if I was going to be hosting a session while he was in town,\u201d she says. There wasn\u2019t another workshop scheduled, but she made it happen so Rubash and Cotton could connect\u2014despite the fact that Rubash had never participated in true figure modeling before. \u201cI had the lighting, the set-up, the supplies he needed, and then he met her, and it was that dream thing, where I said to Robin, this is it. I know you\u2019re shy, I know you get nervous, but you\u2019re going to be safe, and this is a once-in-a-lifetime thing. I had been trying to get her in front of Will forever, and by the end of the class, he had invited her to New York to draw her.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Robin Rubash with The Siren\u2019s Offer<\/em>. Courtesy Robin Rubash<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Cotton was drawn to Rubash\u2019s \u201cuncommon combination of gentleness and authority, the alluring complexity of her eyes, a face that\u2019s soft but not passive.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd this was before he knew about her online persona,\u201d Honig adds.<\/p>\n

On social media, and in her sex work practice, Rubash has long gone by the moniker Mermaid Hime Princess<\/a>. \u201cI have always said, before I die, I want to model as a mermaid, be portrayed as a mermaid, because that goes along with my trans identity,\u201d Rubash explains. \u201cI was attracted to mermaids since I was a little boy, and I\u2019ve noticed throughout the years that mermaids do resonate with a lot of trans people, and I believe there\u2019s this beauty, the long hair\u2014you know, kids who were not allowed to transition still grow out their hair. And they don\u2019t have genitalia, they\u2019re just beautiful creatures, and that\u2019s always spoken to me.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI didn\u2019t know about that at first,\u201d Cotton says. \u201cI saw her in class; she had a relaxed confidence in her body, the way she held a pose without stiffening. It wasn\u2019t until later, when we sat down to talk, that she mentioned she\u2019d been obsessed with mermaids since childhood. And I remember laughing, because I\u2019d already begun thinking of her for a mermaid painting.\u201d<\/p>\n

More in Artists<\/h3>\n

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