Opening Up by Daniel Leighton

My work is driven by a fundamental belief: that identifying, acknowledging, and expressing our emotions is essential to personal and collective healing. Emotions shape our perceptions, behaviors, and relationships, yet they are often suppressed or overlooked—buried beneath the velocity of modern life and a cultural preference for quick fixes over deep understanding.

Through my art, I aim to create space for those emotions to be seen, felt, and processed. I combine my four main areas of study—art, technology, film, and the human condition—to explore the terrain of the psyche and body. Using iPad, Augmented Reality (AR), sound, animation, and interactivity, I craft immersive, multi-sensory experiences that bridge inner and outer worlds, ancient instincts and cutting-edge tools.

Born with Crohn’s Disease, I’ve lived with the realities of illness, trauma, and physical vulnerability for as long as I can remember. These experiences have given me a heightened emotional and somatic awareness—insight that informs every piece I create. Where some see technology as a distraction from emotional connection, I see it as a portal: a way to expand empathy, communicate the unspeakable, and transform pain into presence.

My paintings and AR experiences function as emotional maps—visual languages that help us recognize what’s happening inside ourselves and others. They are invitations to reconnect with the parts of us we’ve learned to hide, and to reimagine what is possible when we bring those parts into the light.