Buffalo Optical

"Buffalo Optical" (1982) is a super-realist oil painting by Robert Cottingham that was purchased by the Art Fund, Inc. for Birmingham Museum of Art in 1983. In 1984 the Coe Kerr Gallery in New York donated a graphite study for the painting, known by the same title, to the museum.

Cottingham's art is inspired by urban streetscapes, the play of light and shadow on elements of the commercial vernacular, and especially on letterforms rendered in neon, aluminum and plastic.