Daniel Leighton is an Augmented Reality artist, iPad painter, filmmaker, and technologist who started programming at the age of eleven. Having Crohn’s Disease since birth, Leighton faced his mortality from a very young age. Countless invasive procedures, hospitalizations and surgeries helped drive him to dive deep into a lifelong quest to understand the workings of his body and his emotions.
Leighton creates emotional portraits with simple lines and brilliant colours to capture complex states of the human psyche, while exploring the possibilities of technology and human emotion being harnessed for the greater good.
Leighton adds Augmented Reality (AR) to his paintings by combining his backgrounds in filmmaking and computer programming. Using the Daniel Leighton Art + AR app, viewers can experience additional dimensions of Daniel’s AR-enhanced paintings. As art critic, Shana Nys Dambrot, says about Daniel’s app, “[it] turns your device into a viewing portal into what it is tempting to describe as a parallel universe.”
Leighton’s work has been featured by Timothy Potts, Director of the Getty Museum in Los Angeles and the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, where he recently spoke. His most recent exhibition was at the San Luis Obispo Museum of Art (SLOMA) from April – June, 2018.