Daniel Leighton

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, Victoria and Albert Museum in London, where he recently spoke, the LA Center for Digital Art (LACDA), Technarte, the San...

BA Film, UC Berkeley, Cum Laude, Regent & Chancellors Scholarship

2018
Featured Speaker “Technarte: Where Art and Technology Meet”, Technarte Conference, Downtown Independent, Los Angeles, CA

2 Person Show “SLOMA & LACDA Present: Electric Abstractions: The Art of Jayne Behman and Daniel Leighton”, Los Angeles Center for Digital Art, Los Angeles, CA

3 Person Show “Electric Abstractions: The Art of Jayne Behman, Robert Chapman and Daniel Leighton”, San Luis Obispo Museum of Art (SLOMA), San Luis Obispo, CA

Group “Insides Out”, USC Keck School of Medicine, Los Angeles, CA

Group VR Fest, Las Vegas, NV

2017
Keynote San Luis Obispo Museum of Art (SLOMA) Sustaining Society, Luncheon, San Luis Obispo, CA

Keynote Mobile Digital Art and Creativity Summit, Palo Alto, CA

Group Talk “Digital Future: Health, Art and Visibility”, Victoria and Albert Museum, London, England

Solo M.A.R.S. Festival, Angel City Brewery, Los Angeles, CA

2016
Group M.A.S. Attack, Torrance Art Museum, Torrance, CA

Group Virtual & Augmented Reality World Conference & Expo 2016, Toronto, Ontario, Canada

Group “Flight Patterns”, Art Share L.A., Los Angeles, CA

Group “Museums and the Web”, 20th Annual Conference, curated by Rex Bruce, Director, Los Angeles Center For Digital Art (LACDA), Los Ang...