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.

He creates emotional portraits with simple lines and brilliant colors 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.”

Daniel’s work has been featured by Timothy Potts, Director of the Getty Museum in Los Angeles, Bryan Barcena Museum of Contemporary Art (MoCA), Nicholas Barlow, Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), Victoria and Albert Museum in London, where he recently spoke, the LA Center for Digital Art (LACDA), Technarte, the San Luis Obispo Museum of Art (SLOMA) and more.

You are invited to stop, look and feel.