Art in the Arthouse presents Daniel Leighton’s “The Screen In My Head”
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. His countless medical experiences have propelled him on a quest to deeply understand his physical and emotional being.
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. 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, the LA Center for Digital Art (LACDA), Technarte, the San Luis Obispo Museum of Art (SLOMA) and more.
Artist Statement:
My art is focused on the importance of identifying, acknowledging and expressing emotions. We all feel emotions and they impact us greatly, but they often go unacknowledged. This is due to the speed and complexity of modern day life, as well as a cultural imperative to find short-term solutions rather than addressing the core issues that would lead to long-term positive change.
To create my work, I combine my four primary areas of study: art, technology, film and the human condition. Synthesizing the old and new, I depict raw emotions using imagery, color, video, sound, animation and interactivity with high tech mediums like iPad and Augmented Reality.
While many people see technology as an obstacle to connecting to their emotions, I see it as a gateway. My paintings and my AR app are tools to help us understand ourselves and each other more completely and to achieve our greatest possibilities as individuals and as a collective whole.
Materials and Augmented Reality:
We invite you to pause, observe, and immerse yourself in the multifaceted world of Daniel Leighton’s art. These pieces are fine art, museum-quality, archival C-prints, encased in lucite or mounted on aluminum with archival laminate. By downloading the ‘Daniel Leighton Art + AR‘ app from the App Store, you can unlock the augmented reality elements of his paintings, marked with (AR), and embark on a journey of emotional and technological exploration.
