Investigating the relationship between the digital and the traditional, Mat Dugard’s artistic practice combines digital tools such as 3D modelling and photo manipulation, with traditional painting techniques, to forge new relationships between recognisable and abstract form. The computer and the act of painting work collaboratively throughout Dugard’s process, constantly reshaping the imagery that is being created and its meaning.
Dugard describes his creative exploration as ‘play’ and explains that ‘this process mirrors today’s lives lived on the edge of the real and the simulated. In doing so, I juxtapose the historic tradition of painting with the ever-evolving nature of the digital space in order to revise the world around us and its multiplicity of interpretations.’
I Wasn’t Prepared explores the artist’s notion of being ‘raised for a world that no longer exists and trying to now to raise my own son. All the while swimming in existentialism and constantly distracted by the spectacle.’ In an attempt to find meaning in today’s fast-paced life, Mat Dugard’s exhibition of paintings at Birnam Arts presents us with ‘a visual stream of consciousness diary’, where elements of illustration, landscape, portraiture and text are abstracted and layered, like a mood board, offering moments of reflection within an overstimulated world.
Mat Dugard is a multidisciplinary Visual Artist based in Perth, Scotland. After gaining a BA (Hons) in Contemporary Art and Contextualised Practice, Dugard went on to exhibit in the prestigious New Contemporaries Exhibition at the Royal Scottish Academy. Since then, he has established himself as an emerging artist in the Scottish contemporary art scene, selling and exhibiting work both nationally and internationally. In 2020 Dugard was commissioned by Culture Perth and Kinross to create a response to the Covid-19 pandemic which resulted in an artwork that wrapped the four columns of Perth Museum and Art Gallery. Dugard’s public artworks can be seen in various locations across Perth and his work is owned by private collectors worldwide. He continues to follow his process and ‘play’ with the world around him with the hope of one day understanding it.