Stefany Layton
Stefany Layton is a Colombian visual artist working at the intersection of painting and technology. Her practice combines traditional techniques with virtual reality tools to create immersive and dreamlike environments where the boundaries between the natural and the artificial begin to blur. Inspired by organic patterns and landscapes, she explores how digital media open up new ways of inhabiting and perceiving our surroundings.
Through animated paintings and virtual installations, Stefany invites the viewer to actively engage with the work, interacting with spaces that are not only visual, but also emotional and contemplative. Her creative process begins in 3D environments, which later transform into sketches and physical paintings, preserving the tactile quality of gesture and material while expanding into new expressive dimensions.
Her work reflects on technology as an extension of human essence. In a world of constant transformation, her immersive landscapes offer moments of pause, presence, and reconnection between the visible and the invisible, the digital and the vital.
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“Through digital painting and virtual reality, I explore how the landscape transforms as we shift between physical and virtual worlds — a metamorphosis of perception, memory, and presence.”
6 questions with Stefany Layton
We ask our emerging artists 6 questions to uncover what drives their work, practice, and creativity.
What themes or questions do you find recurring in your work?
My work stems from a constant question: what do we truly see when we look “outside”? In the digital age, the landscape is no longer purely natural — it is filtered through screens, interfaces, and algorithms. I’m drawn to explore how technology has become an essential part of our environment, and how, through it, we reinterpret the organic. The transformation of the landscape — its fragmentation, its fusion with the artificial — is a central theme in my practice. I also reflect on how we emotionally inhabit these hybrid spaces, and what remains of nature amid so much code and simulation.
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Can you describe a pivotal moment in your journey as an artist?
One of the most pivotal moments in my journey was when I began working with virtual reality. The ability to create landscapes from the inside — to walk within the artwork — completely shifted how I understand painting. I moved from thinking in flat images to building immersive, emotional spaces. This transition made me feel that art could expand, not only into new technologies but into a deeper kind of connection with the viewer. It was like discovering another visual language — one that allowed me to unite the digital with the spiritual, the intimate with the technological.
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What materials or processes are most important in your practice - and why?
My practice moves between the digital and the physical. I primarily work with 3D environments built in virtual reality, where I construct landscapes that I can walk through and imagine from within. From those scenes, I select still images that later become fine art prints or are reinterpreted as oil paintings.
Oil painting is an essential part of my process because it reconnects me with matter, with physical gesture, and with a slower, contemplative time. It is a way of returning to the body after the immersive digital experience. This combination of media allows me to explore the landscape on multiple perceptual levels — immersive, visual, tactile, and emotional. It’s not about choosing between the digital and the physical, but allowing both languages to coexist and dialogue in my work.
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How do you want people to feel when they experience your work?
I hope that when people encounter my work, they feel a mix of wonder and contemplation. That they pause for a moment and reflect on the environment they inhabit — how they perceive it, remember it, and relate to it. I aim to evoke a sense of poetic estrangement: something that feels both familiar and completely new.
I also hope they experience an emotional connection, finding fragments of themselves in these imagined landscapes — places that don’t exist, but contain echoes of something once seen through a window, in a dream, or within the imagination. I want my work to offer a moment of stillness — a space to look gently, to feel part of something greater, more alive, and deeply interconnected.
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What does a typical day in your studio look like?
My studio is a laboratory of exploration. Each day is an opportunity to experiment and to rethink what we understand as image and painting. I begin by immersing myself in digital tools — using VR, nodes, particles, and 3D planes to construct environments. It’s not just visual creation; it’s also about feeling and inhabiting the process, as if painting from within the image itself.
I’m interested in the idea of expanded painting: thinking of painting not just as brush on canvas, but as a form of navigation and reinterpretation of the landscape. I paint with gestures, but also with data, light, and simulations. It’s an intuitive and contemplative practice, where technology is not just an external tool, but a sensitive medium I dialogue with.
In this hybrid space between the physical and digital, the everyday becomes possibility. And so, my studio becomes a place to see the world — and painting — in new ways.
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What dreams or hopes do you have for your artistic journey?
I dream of continuing to build a bridge between the sensitive and the technological through my work — to touch people on a deeper level. I hope my artistic practice helps to rethink how we inhabit the landscape — not only the outer world, but the inner one, which is continuously reshaped by the digital age.
I would love to keep developing projects that unfold in different formats and contexts — from physical exhibitions to immersive experiences in virtual environments. I want to collaborate with institutions, communities, and spaces that value experimentation, transdisciplinary dialogue, and the intersection between art, technology, and nature.
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