Leila Pinto is an artist who embodies the space between the physical and digital worlds. Her NFTs sprung up in 2020 as a way to engage with what she called the “captive audience” of art lovers during the pandemic, and she supports RealNifty as much as they support her mission of omnichannel arts and culture.
Pinto is more than just an NFT artist—far from it. Rather, her work is designed to be experienced on as many platforms as possible. The duality between the digital and the physical realms in her work is also a part of her biography: by day, Pinto is a Wall Street executive, in high-stakes corporate meetings and technical, tactical approaches…but can also be found exploring nature and finding solace in the calm. This versatility is ideally suited to the emerging field of digital art, often engaging in dialogue about the medium and even educating people as needed.
This diversity of thought is evidenced in the expanse of work in Pinto’s repertoire. From Ocean Inspired paintings of the seascape to the demonstration of her classical training skills in hand-painted Rembrandt copies, From Wall Street’s flashing computer screens to the serene landscapes of the Hudson River School, Pinto manages to integrate personal experiences and encapsulate a variety of artistic styles and techniques seemingly effortlessly.
A consummate traveler of physical spaces, Pinto has painted in the Grand Tetons, the mountains of New Hampshire, and in Sea Island, Georgia, and exhibited in her home cities of Manhattan, Southampton, New York and Hilton Head, South Carolina. In each place, she immerses herself in the cultures and climates of each space she inhabits, literally and artistically.
“For many years, I was in a major museum or art gallery once or twice a week, to experience art in person ” Pinto explained. But the digital world has opened her up to a new world of connoisseurship, and a fresh audience to experience her sophisticated knowledge.
Pinto has been curated as someone whose attention to detail in art sets her apart from the wave of hype associated with the NFT boom. She has been recognized by SuperRare as an important artist, and had traditional work on the blue-chip art site Artsy.net through her exhibition at AdArt, which was shown at the Oculus three years in a row after being selected by a juried panel of gallerists and museum curators. This exemplifies the link between the digital and the physical, as does the forthcoming show at NFT Now at Hudson Yards this April 2023. In 2022, the Copywriters’ Corner named her one of the 5 NFT artists to watch.
Thanks to digital art spaces, Pinto’s work has been exhibited and appreciated on its grandest scale yet, both in literal size and longevity, by a new fresh audience. Beyond the websites where her art is housed, the Morgan Stanley Jumbotron at Times Square featured her artwork digitally, as did a 24-foot monolith at SCOPE art fair during the 2022 Art Basel Miami Beach annual week of arts and culture. As such, Pinto has been esteemed for her expertise in fine art, NFTs and the Metaverse, invited to speak at Davos and featured in the first all-female NFT showcase in Singapore.
Pinto’s unique ability to pivot runs in step with her creative flow. She has been successful in the physical and digital art worlds, the finance and art worlds, and remains insatiably curious about the future of NFTs. Ultimately, she recognizes that blockchain technology, like her inherent optimism, is essential. The journey is the most important part.
Loving the journey means remaining open-minded during the artistic journey as well.
“Money should never be the goal,” Pinto said. “The pursuit of passion and the dedication, drive, commitment and hard work that should come first. Money only follows a consequence of all those factors aligning.”
In the NFT space, riding the waves of public opinion requires this exact ingredient of personal resilience. As a financially savvy executive, Pinto is fascinated by the royalty model of encrypted provenance, and careful to see how it evolves on a broader scale.
She may not know for sure what happens next, but she will definitely be ready for it.
For more information, be sure to check out Lelia Pinto’s ‘Exuberance Collection’ available for purchase on the RealNifty marketplace and the artist’s website at https://www.leilapinto.com/