Artist Info
Barbara Mary Leighton
English-born Barbara Leighton immigrated to Canada with her family at the age of three. She attended the Provincial Institute of Design and Technology in Calgary, where she met her future husband Alfred Crocker Leighton. Leighton managed and promoted her husband’s art career until his death in 1965. In 1970 she completed a diploma in fibre and metal crafts from the Alberta College of Art and Design. Recognized as an independent artist, she is also well-known for her colour wood block prints based on images by her husband, which she signed as Barleigh.
Leighton was elected to the Canadian Society of Painter-Etchers and Engravers in 1941 and belonged to the Alberta Society of Artists. Her Calgary Foothills home has grown to become the Leighton Art Centre. In 2019 the University of Lethbridge presented her work in the exhibition “Collected by Dr. Hess: Alfred and Barbara Leighton”.
