Hannah Leighton

Lives and works in Los Angeles, CA, USA

Artist statement

Artist Statement: Hannah Knight Leighton’s current work focuses on the tension between traditional craft techniques, painting history, the aesthetics of casual consumerism, and the influence of digital technologies on contemporary perception. Beginning with digital drawings, Leighton uses a tufting gun to create large-scale abstract paintings of acrylic yarn on monk’s cloth. Drawing from life, incorporating translations of oddly-shaped commodities spied in shopping malls alongside excerpts of beloved historical works of art—Leighton clone stamps, lassos, and layers multiple compositions, creating irreverent interruptions across the screen. The results resemble portals into previous configurations, sometimes zoetropic abstractions that mutate as they multiply or brain-bending multi-dimensional puzzle parts that coagulate into impossible architectures.This embrace of space, of deletion, of emptiness, of natural ways of seeing is precisely what makes the logic of Leighton’s paintings congeal.

Artwork